Forbid Me Nothing
by Lucilla Darkate
Summary: DMHGBZ Hermione is sent to prison. Draco is in the next cell, Blaise Zabini is her lawyer, and nobody believes she didn't do it but a crazy man, a Death Eater, and the real killer. Continued at my livejournal, user name lucilla darkate
1. In which there is a Conviction

_"Better lives have been lived in the margins, locked in the prisons,_

_and lost on the gallows than have ever been enshrined in palaces."_

Propagandhi

* * *

"Miss Granger, you have been tried and convicted by a jury of your peers, this day, of the malicious and knowing murder of Ronald Weasley." Rufus Scrimgeour's voice boomed in the crowded dungeon-like court room.

Hermione stared straight ahead, refusing to cringe, or weep, or—God forbid—beg for mercy, as she was sure they all expected her to do in one way or another. She could hardly say their decision was unexpected. When one was caught in bed with the recently dead body of one of the world's most well-respected wizards, covered in said wizard's blood, and holding the knife with which he had been stabbed—well, the case was pretty much open and shut.

Never mind that her supposed victim was also one of her best friends, or that for some reason she could not remember anything that had happened between early that evening when she sat down with a book and a hot cup of tea in her own home, and later that night when she was caught, literally, red-handed with Ron's blood soaking into her clothes and the mattress. Trivial information, that was, and not something the Ministry wanted to hear. Oh, they had heard it all right, for she had done all that she could to defend herself against their ridiculous and confusing allegations, but they had all listened with an air of indifference. Their very manner shouting that they had already tried, convicted, and sentenced her in their own minds, and all of this was just window-dressing.

"Do you have anything to say for yourself?" Scrimgeour asked.

Hermione looked down at her hands, chained to the arms of the chair in which she sat, then around at the faces of the wizards and witches all watching and listening eagerly. She picked out Harry in the crowd, sitting with the Weasley's. Molly Weasley was weeping into the collar of his shirt, but Hermione did not delude herself that these were tears of grief for her; Mrs. Weasley was still mourning her son. It was more likely that they were tears of joy that the evil, murderous Jezebel that killed her little boy was going away to Azkaban.

With wry amusement, Hermione even noticed Rita Skeeter, sitting as close to the front row as she could get, her Quick-Quotes Quill suspended over a roll of parchment. She looked a little worse for wear, a little more grey in her hair, a few more wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and quite a bit less polish and sparkle in her wardrobe, but still Rita Skeeter through and through.

"Hermione Granger," Scrimgeour snapped, drawing her attention abruptly back to him. "For the last time, do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Hermione met his cold eyes unflinchingly. Rufus Scrimgeour, the minister of magic himself. Only a high-publicity case such as this could have brought him here today. He was going a bit grey around the ears himself, she noticed.

"I would say that I didn't do it," she said. Her voice was soft, but it gained in strength as she spoke. "But you wouldn't believe me, and as I've been convicted, as you say, by a jury of my peers, it hardly seems relevant. I am sorry that Ron is dead . . ."

Mrs. Weasley made a strangled whimpering noise and Hermione felt her heart constrict a little in pity.

"I loved Ron," she said. "He was one of my closest friends. I did not kill him. No one else has to believe that, but I want his family to know, I could never do such a thing."

"Thank you Miss Granger," Scrimgeour said. "Your statement has been recorded."

A small hunch-backed man with little square spectacles approached Scrimgeour with a slim wooden box in his hands. He opened it and held it up when the Minister gestured for it, revealing Hermione's wand. Scrimgeour picked it up and held it aloft for everyone to get a good look at it. Like none of them had never seen a wand before. Scrimgeour looked at Hermione sternly, perhaps expecting to see some flicker of emotion; fear, anger, trepidation, shame.

Hermione stared impassively past his shoulder.

With a sudden movement, the Minister grasped the wand in both hands and snapped it across his knee.

She looked at the pieces in his hands, still held together by twisted dragon heartstring, and felt a little sad. She had gone through school with that wand; battled trolls, hexed pixies, changed parrots into water goblets, and broken God alone knew how many rules. That wand had gone into war with her, and it had carried her through the battles and brought her safely home again. She turned her cold gaze on Rufus Scrimgeour and in that moment, if she had had her wand and been free to do so, she very likely would have injured him.

He dropped the broken pieces of her wand back into the box like they were garbage. "Burn it," he said.

The little man clapped the box closed on the broken wand, nodded, and backed away.

Scrimgeour gestured to another man standing behind and to the right of the chair in which Hermione was bound, and the man stepped forward to remove the chains from her wrists and replace them with manacles. The manacles were attached to another chain, which he held in his big gloved hands.

She stood when the guard jerked on the chain.

"Hermione Granger, you are hereby sentenced to twenty-five years in Azkaban Prison," Scrimgeour proclaimed. "Your sentence is to be carried out immediately. Take her out of my sight."

Hermione couldn't help it; that last made her smile. Trust Scrimgeour to try to curry favor with voters by being overly dramatic at a sensational murder trial.

She heard a nervous stirring and commotion from the onlookers and glanced around to see what it was about. It was only when she realized that they were muttering and pointing at her that she understood that many of them had misinterpreted her brief smile as amusement at her situation—which she supposed, in a way, it was.

Who would have thought? One minute you're a heroine, the next, you're a monster no different from those you profess to hate.


	2. In which Past Acquaintances are Renewed

Hermione fell and scraped her hands on the stone floor when she was thrown into her cell. She hissed at the new pain and glared up at the guard.

"Enjoy your stay," the man said. He laughed and slammed the heavy metal door, shutting out even the faintest light.

"_Don't I get a phone call_?" she yelled. Her voice echoed in the small room and she suddenly felt extremely claustrophobic. Her hands stung, she was cold, and now she was blind. "Damn," she muttered.

On the bright side—if it could be said that there was a bright side—there weren't any dementors in Azkaban anymore. Most of them had been wiped out in the war. That still didn't make the place cheerful by any stretch of the imagination, but it did comfort her a little to know that her chances of going insane within the dank, dark prison were considerably lower without them.

She sighed and ran her hands along the cold stone floor until her fingers brushed something. It was a blanket, ratty, torn, and threadbare, but better than nothing. She wrapped it around herself, shivered, and tucked her knees up against her chest, trying to get warm.

Distantly, she could hear the sound of waves crashing against the stone walls. The North Sea sounded horribly like a woman moaning in pain and despair.

Hermione shivered again pressed her face into the blanket. It smelled like mold and sickness and death. In another cell close by, someone screamed for their mother.

"Oh God," she whimpered. She had not cried when she was arrested, or at any point during her hearing, or even when that bastard Scrimgeour snapped her wand and passed judgment on her, but she felt like crying now. "Oh God," she repeated.

"Who's there?"

She tensed and her head shot up to look around for the source of that voice. Of course, she couldn't see anything, not even the stone walls of her own cell.

"Hello! Who's there?" the voice hissed again.

"What do you want?" Hermione asked. She was ashamed to hear her own voice shake.

"Who are you?" It was a male voice, Hermione decided. She hadn't been able to tell before, but when he brought it above a hissing whisper, she could. "Who are you?" he repeated.

"I . . . Hermione," she stuttered. "My name's Hermione."

"Granger?" the voice sounded incredulous. "Is that you, Granger?"

"Er . . . yes," she said. "How do you—"

The voice laughed and Hermione's eyes widened in shocked recognition. "Think, Granger," he said. "Think real hard."

"Malfoy?" she whispered. "Draco Malfoy."

"The one and only," he replied.

Hermione got up, feeling her way along the wall toward the source of his voice. She found it when her hands glanced off the bars of a small ventilation window about five feet up from the floor, slightly lower than eye-level for her. She gripped the bars and tried to see through them into his cell. All she could see was a darker shadow in the blackness.

"Malfoy?"

His hand shot through the bars and closed over hers, not painfully, but with a strength that implied a kind of latent violence held closely in check. "What the devil are you doing here, Granger?"

She tried to pull her hand away from him, but his grip tightened. His fingers were slim and bony, but as strong as steel bands. She stopped pulling and let him hold her hand. "I could ask the same thing of you, Malfoy," she said. "I thought you were dead."

He laughed humorlessly, his thumb running back and forth over her fingers. "Not yet," he said. "And believe me, I've tried."

He caressed her hand like it was the most fascinating thing he'd touched in his entire life. Hermione suspected it was the human contact alone that he craved, and had nothing at all really to do with her. The last time she saw him was the night Dumbledore had died, more than twelve years ago. He must have been arrested and locked up soon after that, and how long had he been alone in his cold, dark cell with only his thoughts? Ten years? Eleven? Long enough to have contemplated suicide, attempted it, and discovered that the prison would not let him die. It hardly surprised her then that he had gone a little bit mad.

"So what exactly are you doing here, Granger?" He asked again. "Did you kill somebody?" He laughed like that was the most absurd thing in world.

In truth, she had killed a lot of people, but that had been war, and another matter entirely. "I don't know," she said.

"What the hell do you mean, you don't know?" He asked, a light tone of mockery sneaking into his voice. "Did you kill somebody, or didn't you? It's a simple question."

If only the answer were half as simple. "I don't remember."

"You don't remember," he said flatly. "Well, then who do they think you killed?"

She took a shuddering breath, then slowly let it out. "Ron."

"Weasley?" He choked. "They think you murdered Weasley?"

"I would assume so, yes, as I'm here and that's what Scrimgeour said it was for," she said.

"Why in God's name would they think that?" he demanded.

She smiled. Whether he meant to or not, he had just given her the one and only vote of confidence in her innocence that she could recall getting through the entire bloody thing. Strange that it should come from someone like Draco Malfoy, when those she thought of as friends had not been nearly as certain.

"I suppose they might think I killed him because they found me in his bed with his dead body, holding the knife that he had been stabbed with," she said, her tone almost conversational.

"Jesus, Granger," he said. "Remind me to never get on your bad side—or into your bed."

She coughed back a laugh. "It wasn't my bed, it was his."

"Still," he said, and she could imagine him shrugging, "Not a bad way to go, I guess."

"You don't sound all that surprised," Hermione pointed out.

"That Weasley's dead?" He snorted. "I'm not. Someone was bound to do it eventually. . . I didn't think it would be you though."

She didn't have anything to say to that, so she just stood there and let him fondle her fingers. It actually felt rather nice.

"How long?" Draco asked her after a few minutes.

"What?"

"How long are you in here for offing the weasel?" he clarified.

"Oh, twenty-five years," she said.

He gave a low whistle.

"What about you?" she asked. "Why are you here?"

"Now come on, Granger, I thought you were smart," he said. "They say I'm a Death Eater, remember?"

She did remember. She also remembered that he had been charged by his master to kill Dumbledore, and that despite everything, he had not done it. "How long are you here for?" she asked.

"Until I rot, presumably," he said. "They don't let Death Eaters walk out of here, not even the ones they can't actually prove are Death Eaters."

Hermione recalled reading about Stan Shunpike after the war was over. She'd been checking the list of fatalities, searching for the names of friends and acquaintances, when she noticed the article. Stan had gotten himself a lawyer somehow and been appealing his sentence when he was found dead in the showers by one of the guards. They still didn't know who had killed him, not that they were looking all that hard to find out. No, they didn't let accused Death Eaters walk out of Azkaban, not even the innocent ones.

Just then they heard the sound of jangling keys outside her door.

"Shit," Draco hissed. "Get down, Granger."

"Let go of my hand then," she told him, tugging on it frantically.

He released her and she pulled her hand back through the bars. She scooted away from the little vent toward the back of her cell and curled up against the wall. When the metal door was flung open, faint grey light hit her face and she blinked owlishly, trying to adjust her eyes.

"Get up," the guard snapped. He kicked her and his hard boot connected solidly with her ribs. She yelped in pain and used the slimy stones of the wall to pull herself to her feet.

"What's going on?" she asked. The guard was looking at her oddly; she pulled her blanket tighter around her body and hoped he was not looking at her for the reason she thought. "What—?"

"You got a visitor," he said.

"Who?"

"Don't know," he said. He clapped the heavy manacles over her wrists, and she hissed when the clasp pinched her skin. He took the end of the chain and dragged her out the door. "Come on."

Hermione tried to keep up as the big man pulled her along the passageways behind him. She stumbled once, and with a savage curse, he dragged her to her feet again and shoved her onward. He stopped at a heavy wood door and flicked through the keys on a massive key-ring until he found the one for the door, then unlocked it and shoved her in ahead of him.

The guard led her to a long, solid wood table with a steel ring in the center of it. He wrapped the chain at the end of the manacles around the ring, locked them in place, and turned to go.

"Sir, what—?"

"He'll be in shortly," the guard said, then left and locked the door behind him.

Hermione looked around for a chair to sit down on. There wasn't one. There was a chair on the other side of the table, presumably for her visitor, but she couldn't reach it, and it looked like it might be bolted to the floor anyway.

"Bugger," she said, and waited.


	3. In which Hermione gains a Champion

Hermione did not know the man who walked into the room a few minutes later. She had been expecting Harry, or even one of Ron's brothers—well, hoping really, more than expecting—not some tall, dark stranger. Though he did seem a little familiar.

"Hello," she said. She cocked her head to one side and studied him. He was very tall, though most men were taller than her, so she wasn't really in much of a position to judge. He was impeccably dressed in deep navy blue robes that looked like they cost more money than she had ever seen in her life. Not that she was complaining, but why the hell was he visiting her? "Do I know you?"

He crossed the room and for the first time she noticed he was carrying a leather parchment tube on a strap over one shoulder. Without a word to her he set it down on the table and settled himself into the seat across from her. It was only then that he looked at her, and that feeling of familiarity increased.

"I do know you, don't I?" She asked. He had the blackest eyes she'd ever seen, almond shaped and tilted, with thick dark lashes that were, quite frankly, better suited to a woman. "I'm sorry, I can't remember."

"Yes," he said, and his voice was deep and smooth, like poison and chocolate. "You would seem to be having that problem quite a lot lately."

She narrowed her eyes on him, trying to think where she had seen his face before—and that accent, surely she would remember something like that if she had ever met the man before. "I'm sorry," she said, finally giving up. "Who are you?"

He leaned back in his chair, as much as it would allow, and steepled his fingers. "My name is Blaise Zabini, and I am your attorney, Miss Granger."

"You were in my year at Hogwarts," she said, suddenly remembering. "Slughorn always invited us both to those silly little dinner parties of his."

"Indeed," he said. "Well, I am glad to see your memory finally returning, Miss Granger. Perhaps you could tell me what exactly happened."

"I already told the Ministry, I don't know," she said. She eyed him sitting across from her, looking cool, expensive, and catlike. Completely unmoved by her or his surroundings. "What do you mean, you're my lawyer, Zabini? I thought you were a purist."

He merely lifted an eyebrow at the disdainful tone in her voice.

"And anyway, I can't afford a lawyer. I couldn't before, and I certainly can't afford one now," she said. By now, the Ministry would have confiscated everything she owned, right down to her silk knickers. "And you'll excuse me for noticing, but I seriously doubt you do pro bono work."

"Pro bono?" he said. He waved the muggle term away with one of his long fingered hands. "You do not have to worry about payment, Miss Granger. It has been taken care of."

"By who?"

"Your wonder-boy Potter, who else?" he said. He sat forward and began opening the leather parchment tube he'd brought with him.

"Harry?" she said. "But he didn't believe me, why would he—?"

"It appears that he has had a change of heart."

Or he was feeling responsible and guilty for letting her go to prison, even if she did kill Ron. "He believes me then?"

Zabini's eyes shifted from the scroll of parchment he'd been looking at to lock with hers. "Right about now Miss Granger, I'd say he's probably one of the very few who do."

"Oh," she said. She felt a little ashamed for thinking badly of Harry, who had probably paid a fortune for the man sitting across from her. Even if it was true.

"I will need your signature on a few things," Zabini said, turning the parchment toward her. "If you're accepting me as your council, that is."

Hermione ran her fingers through her hair. She picked up the parchment and began reading it. It was a contract. Her hand snagged on a tangle and with a hiss, she removed her fingers from her hair. "You're going to try to repeal?" she asked, looking up from the paper to his face.

"That was the idea," he said, passing her a quill and a bottle of ink. "Unless you'd prefer to stay here? Granted, it's not fancy, but I could see where one might find it charming, in a rather dungeonesque sort of way."

She paused in the process of lowering the quill to paper and stared at him. "This is not funny, Zabini."

He smiled and shrugged lazily. "Don't worry about it Granger."

"That's easy for you to say," she snapped. "You don't have to spend the night in a cold stone room with the guy a couple of cells down screaming for his mother."

He chuckled. "I'm a good lawyer, Miss Granger. If I can get you out of this, I will. So don't worry about it and sign the damned papers."

Grumbling to herself, she put her signature on the contract, then again when he unrolled it further and pointed to the place. When she was finished, he rolled the parchment back up and returned it and the quill and ink to the tube.

"Now, is there anything I can get for you?" He asked as he stood up. "Is there anything you need?"

"How about a blanket and some clothes that don't feel and smell like someone has recently died in them?" she asked, looking down at the dirty striped trousers and tunic she was wearing. It was so filthy that it was yellow and black with patches of brown that looked and felt like dried blood.

Zabini grimaced. "I will see what I can do. Anything else?"

She met his eyes across the table. "Just get me the fuck out of here, Zabini, before I go crazy."

He gave a curt nod and turned to leave.

"Zabini?" she said, and he paused. "Do you believe me?"

He smiled, and suddenly she remembered something about him that she had forgotten. His mother. His lovely, seductive, deadly mother, who had been married eleven times, and become a rich woman when each of her husbands mysteriously died soon after and left her everything. She had never been convicted, or even gone to trial for any of their deaths, though the entire wizarding world knew that she had killed them.

"I don't have to believe you Granger," he said, "I just have to defend you."

With that, he swept from the room with his parchment roll over his shoulder. A few minutes later, a guard came and took her back to her cell.


	4. Of Mealtimes and Knickers

The meal was brought around a few hours later—she couldn't really call it supper because she had no idea what time it was. Then again, she couldn't really call it a meal either. It consisted of a flat of hard, dry bread, a cup of murky water, and a little wedge of cheese.

Hermione used the water to soften the bread and ate that, but she put the cheese aside. She had caught a look at it when the guard brought the food and it was practically popping with mites and hardly looked like cheese.

"Oi, Granger," whispered Draco. "What did you get?"

She looked up at the vent, but couldn't see him. "Hard bread, water, and something that might be cheese," she said.

"You got cheese?" he said.

"I think so," she said. "Do you want it?"

He hesitated only a moment. "Don't you want it?"

"No," she said. "It has bugs in it."

"Give it here then," he said.

She got up and took it to him. He pulled it back through the bars of the vent and she didn't hear anything from him for a few minutes.

"Are you really eating that?" she asked finally.

"Course I am," he said. He swallowed, then asked, "Why?"

"Well, it can't be healthy with all of those mites crawling—"

"Protein, Granger," he said, chewing the last of it and wiping his hands on his filthy tunic.

"That's disgusting," she said.

"Yeah? Well, give it time. You've only been here, what, a day?"

She thought that sounded about right, though she couldn't actually be sure. There were no windows looking out at the sky in any part of the fortress that she had been in, so it might well have been the middle of the night, or the next morning. "I think so," she said.

"So who was your visitor, Granger?" he asked.

He had not asked when she was first brought back, though she suspected that he had wanted to. It would seem that curiosity had finally gotten the better of him.

"A lawyer," she said.

"Yours?"

"No, Malfoy, somebody else's lawyer," she said sarcastically. "Yes, mine."

"Is he going to appeal?"

"Yes."

"Won't do any good, you know."

"Well aren't you just a ray of fucking sunshine," she snapped irritably.

He snickered. "Who's paying for him?"

"What makes you think I'm not?"

"Don't be absurd, Granger," he said, and she could almost hear him rolling his eyes. "I'm not a moron. I know that the Ministry confiscates all of your possessions when they throw you in here. If they didn't, do you think I'd still be in here?"

"It was Harry," she told him.

"Potter?" he said. "Isn't that just typical."

Hermione didn't argue the point. It was typical.

"So Golden Boy Potter is still alive," he mused.

"Don't sound so disappointed."

"You're defending him?" He sounded incredulous. "Tell me something, Granger; if Potter's so fucking noble, why did he wait until they clapped you in irons to come to your rescue?"

She was silent for a long time, then finally she said, "I don't know."

"And why hasn't he come to visit you? Why did he send his little pet lawyer to you without him?"

Hermione didn't think 'pet lawyer' was a very fair estimation of Zabini. She couldn't think of anyone who looked less like someone's lackey.

"He has a wife and children now, Malfoy," she said instead of defending Zabini's honor. "He has other responsibilities."

"Potter has a wife and kiddies?" Draco said. "Isn't that sweet. I bet they've all got flaming red hair and more freckles than a dart board, too."

Yes they did, and Harry's wife would probably skin him alive if she ever knew that he was paying to defend the woman that she and her entire family believed to be her brother's murderer. She didn't tell Draco this; he would have only laughed.

"Why do you have to be so nasty?" she demanded.

"What? I'm not," he protested. "I'm just making conversation, Granger. Don't get your knickers in a twist."

"You are," she said. "And my knickers are none of your business."

"Only because I can't get to them from in here," he said lewdly.

Her eyebrows shot up at that, but she didn't comment on it. "What if I decided to stop talking to you at all?" she asked instead. "How would you like that?"

"Oh, come on, Granger, don't be like that."

Silence.

"Granger?"

Somewhere on the other side of Draco's cell, the prisoner started calling for his mother.

"Granger, talk to me."

Silence.

"Granger, damn it."

Silence.

"Granger, please. I'm sorry."

The prisoner's screams for his mother started to become more desperate.

"Granger, don't leave me alone here with the Mother Crier, for God's sake."

Hermione lay down on the floor, wrapped her blanket around herself, and tried to ignore him.

"Granger, you can be such a bitch sometimes, you know that?"

She smiled and a few minutes later, she was asleep.

* * *

**_A/N: Yes, the Mother Crier was inspired by Stephen King's The Stand. I thought it was funny, and it fit in nicely with this, so I shamelessly used it./ For those of you who have read my other story "Not Long At All", no, the character Henry Cain was not inspired by the Dark Tower series' Henry Dean(several people have asked me this). The name was actually inspired by Henry DeTamble from The Time Traveler's Wife, which I happened to be reading at the time (fantastic book by the way). Just a little FYI for you. Thank you for Reading, and please, if you have the time, Review._**


	5. Shower Time

Hermione woke when her cell door was flung open and a guard threw something soft in her face. "Get up."

She groaned and picked up the fabric thing that he had hit her with. It was a clean black and white striped tunic and pair of trousers. She shook them out then put her nose close to the material. It didn't smell like soap or flowers, it smelled like absolutely nothing really, which, when she thought about it, was preferable to the alternative.

The guard came forward and snapped the iron manacles around her wrists and tugged her out of her cell.

"Come on. Shower time."

Shower time? Oh, that sounded lovely.

"Your lawyer's causing trouble," the guard said, eyeing her with a look that said he considered it to be entirely her fault. "Making lots of noise about things he shouldn't."

_Way to go Zabini_, she thought cheerfully.

The guard scowled at her faint smile. Prisoners in Azkaban Fortress were not supposed to smile. Ever.

He paused to unlock a door at the end of the corridor then led her into the shower room. There were two other female prisoners in there when they entered. Both of them continued cleaning themselves silently as though they were completely alone.

The guard removed Hermione's cuffs, then stood back and looked at her with his arms crossed over his broad chest. "Strip."

She blinked. "Excuse me?"

He sneered. "You heard me."

He was watching her with avid interest and it made her stomach roll a little at the eager look in his beetle brown eyes.

She instinctively fell back on something that had seen her through numerous hearings and an exhausting, heart-wrenching trial. It was the same thing that had carried her through the war, unphased by all of the blood, death, and carnage—much of it by her own hand. It was like flicking a switch inside her. Like shutting off a light. One minute everything seemed important, everything seemed to matter; the next, it just didn't.

She returned the guards gaze with one of her own and watched his leering expectation turn to confusion. She knew what he was seeing; she'd seen the same thing hundreds of times throughout the war whenever she looked in the mirror. It was this look that had distanced her from Ron, who, before the battles started to wear on her, had foolishly and innocently believed himself in love with her. It wasn't indifference so much as a simple lack of presence. She let her conscious mind slide back and observe the world around her at a distance. Things hurt less that way.

"Strip," the guard repeated. He was angry. She hadn't reacted the way he had wanted her to, or the way he had expected her to. "Now."

She did as he said and stood naked before him with her hands at her side. She didn't even flinch when he grabbed her arms and snapped the cuffs back on. He slapped a sliver of lye soap into her hand, then twined the chains through a metal ring on the wall and left her.

Hermione looked down at the soap held in her right hand—her wand hand—then slowly began to move the little thing back and forth in her palm to get a lather. She stood under the spray and washed her skin, rubbing her arms and legs and belly until they were bright pink and tender. There was no shampoo so she washed her hair as best she could with what was left of the soap. It would tangle horribly, she knew, but there was nothing for it. Her scalp felt oily and dirty, and when she scrubbed the soap into her hair, it felt so good.

She wondered how long it had been since she had last had a shower. She couldn't remember, which usually meant it had been a long time.

She was enjoying the feel of the hot water against her skin, when she heard someone whisper Ron's name and paused.

_"Really? Are you sure?"_

_"Yes, I heard it from Cora Prescott, who heard it from Janet Terrence, who heard it from a guard."_

_"But how could she? She's so small."_

_"Yeah, but she did it. With a knife, you know."_

_"A knife?"_

_"Oh yes. She's a mudblood too, you know. A muggleborn."_

_"Oh. I guess that explains it."_

_"You know, they say they found her in bed with him. Rolling around in his blood like a vampire."_

_"No!"_

_"Yes, and she was still holding the knife._

_"Do they say why she did it?"_

_"She says she can't remember."_

_"Oh really."_

_"Oh yes. Nobody believes her, of course."_

_"It could have been the Imperious Curse."_

_"Yeah, but then how come she can't remember? People under the Imperious Curse can still remember what they did."_

_"But why would she do it then?"_

_"I don't know. Most people think she's a bit mad, you know. From the war."_

_"She doesn't look mad to me."_

_"Crazy people don't have to look crazy."_

_"But weren't they friends back in school?"_

_"Yes, I know. That's why it's so strange, you see."_

_"Were they . . ."_

_"Some people think so. Seeing as how they found her in his bed with him."_

_"A crime of passion."_

_"Or a jealous rage."_

Hermione didn't turn around. She rinsed her hair out, dried off with a towel by the door, put her new clothes on, and banged on the door for the guard to let her out. She wasn't angry. Not really. Nothing they had said was anything she had not heard before.

But she would still rather be in her cold, dark cell listening to the Mother Crier scream himself hoarse than have to listen to it again.


	6. In Which a Deal Is Struck

"So what happened?" Draco asked her the minute the door was slammed shut and locked again.

"What makes you think anything happened?" Hermione asked. She wearily sat down beneath the vent with her back against the wall.

"I heard him say 'shower time'. That's usually not something good, at least for first-timers."

Hermione thought about that and wondered at the kind of experiences he must have had in his long stay there to be able to say something like that. She was willing to bet they weren't good ones.

"Granger?"

"What?"

"Are you alright?"

"I'm fine."

"Really?"

"Yes, really, Malfoy."

He was silent for a while and she began to doze.

"Are you a cold fish, Granger?"

"Am I a what?"

"A cold fish," he repeated. "You know, frigid."

She sighed. "You're going to have to explain that to me because you cannot possibly be asking me what I think you're asking me."

"For fuck's sake, Granger, don't be dense," he said. "Are you a lousy lay? Do you just kind of, well, lay there, or what?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything, Malfoy."

"It has to do with shower time, you dumb bint," he snapped.

"Nothing happened in the shower, Malfoy," she said patiently. "And as to your questions; no, I do not usually just lay there. And I have absolutely no idea if I am a 'lousy lay', as I have never quite been able to figure out how one goes about fucking oneself. However, I can say with complete certainty that I have never once had a complaint."

He was quiet again for perhaps half a minute, then asked, "Are you ugly then?"

Hermione growled in irritation.

"Was that a yes, Granger?"

"No, Malfoy, that was not a yes."

"So you're not ugly."

"No."

"You sound pretty sure of yourself there, Granger."

"Malfoy, I swear to God—"

"Are you fat?"

"Bloody hell," she said in exasperation. "No, I am not fat."

"Are you sure?"

"Last time I cared enough to check I weighed about a hundred and ten pounds, though that's probably gone down a bit recently. Yes, I'm sure."

He was quiet again for long enough that she almost began to believe that he had lost interest in the subject. No such luck.

"Do you have some kind of strange growth on your—?"

"Malfoy, I'll make a deal with you," she said abruptly.

"What kind of deal?" he asked, intrigued.

"If you shut up and stop asking me questions about how tall I am, how big my ass is, and what kinds of funny little moles I have between my eyes, I promise that if we ever both get out of here, I'll shag you senseless so you can do your own evaluation from first-hand experience."

He chuckled softly. "Granger, you do know the odds against us ever actually both getting out of here, don't you?"

She grinned despite herself. "Yes. Why else do you think I would make such a stupid promise?"

"Because you've secretly wanted me all these years and been repressing it?" he ventured innocently.

She snorted. "Hardly."

"Alright, fine," he said. "If you somehow manage to get us both out of here, Granger, I swear I'll let you ravage me within an inch of my life."

"That was not the deal," she said.

"Sure it was," he said. "I just said it different."

She rolled her eyes and snuggled down in her new clean clothes. She had just shut her eyes when she heard him breathing heavily in the next cell.

"Malfoy, what are you doing?"

She heard him grunt, then give an aggravated sigh. "Wanking to mental images of you in nothing but your knickers, Granger."

He certainly had an odd fascination with her knickers. She really didn't think he'd find them all that interesting if he knew that they were plain white cotton, faded to grey from repeated use by strangers.

"No, really, what are you doing?"

"Push-ups, Granger," he said. "Relax, why don't you?"

"Oh," she said. That made sense. It also sounded like something she might try herself later. After a nap. "Why?"

"Gives me something to do besides wank to mental images of you in nothing but your knickers," he said, and laughed.

"Whatever," she muttered. "Go back to your wanking then, Malofy. Sorry I disturbed you."

"Anytime, Granger."

"Goodnight, Malfoy," she said pointedly.

"Goodnight, Granger."

Surprisingly, she did go to sleep soon after, despite her own mental images of him wanking to mental images of her in nothing but her knickers.


	7. Of Dead Men and Their Tales

"Good evening Miss Granger."

Hermione's head shot up and her eyes narrowed dangerously on the man seated across from her.

"Hello, Dumbledore."

"Not 'Professor Dumbledore', Miss Granger?" he asked, his blue eyes sparkling with amusement. "That's not very polite."

She put her elbows on the hard wood table. "You'll have to forgive me," she said. "I'm not feeling terribly polite."

"Consider yourself forgiven," he said magnanimously.

Hermione studied him critically for a minute. He looked very much the same as she remembered him; all white beard and pointy hat, easy smile and gleaming eyes. Eyes that believed themselves to be much more clever than they actually were.

"You look good, Dumbledore," she said. "For a dead guy."

He smiled and conjured a tray of tea and biscuits between them. She also noted, without much surprise, that there was a small crystal dish of lemon drops on the tray beside the biscuits.

"Tea?" he offered.

"No."

His smile didn't waver at her abrupt refusal. He poured himself a cup, added cream and sugar, and sipped.

"What do you want, Dumbledore?" she demanded.

"Miss Granger, do try not to be rude."

She glared at him and gripped the table so hard that her fingertips turned white. "Dumbledore, I'm not in the mood for your shit," she snapped. He didn't even flinch. "In fact, I am restraining myself, just barely, from coming over that table. I think a little rudeness on my part is excusable, and quite frankly, the least of your concerns."

"You have no idea what concerns me, Miss Granger," he said. He calmly set his teacup down on its saucer. "None whatsoever."

They stared at each other across the table. His kindly façade did not even crack.

"What do you want?" she asked again. "I have to assume you want something, or you wouldn't be in my head."

Dumbledore blinked.

Hermione smiled faintly. "Oh yes, I know that I'm dreaming."

What she did not tell him was that she had been forced to learn how to distinguish her dreams from reality to keep from losing her mind. When Voldemort was still alive, when every moment had the potential to be her last, reality had easily been confused with nightmares.

"You seem angry with me, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said. He picked up his teacup again and sipped.

She laughed softly. "Do I? I wonder why that would be, Dumbledore?"

"And so cynical," he said, shaking his head sadly.

Cynical? Yes, she supposed so. Angry; most definitely. Bitter, resentful, and outraged wouldn't have been too much of a stretch either. She was all of those things, and a great deal of her hostility was directed at the man sitting with her at that table.

"You had no right," she said fiercely.

He put his teacup down and arched a fluffy white eyebrow. "Pardon?"

"You had no right to use us the way you did," she said. "None. You didn't even ask."

"It was your destiny," he replied calmly. "You were destined to fight the Dark Lord. And in the end, you were destined to triumph."

"Good triumphs over Evil?" she said sarcastically. "Some triumph."

"It was your destiny," he said again simply. As if that made everything all right.

"I don't believe in destiny."

He smiled. "Your duty then."

She slammed her fist down on the top of the table. The plate of biscuits bounced and the tea things rattled. "No," she said. "You weren't there, you conniving old fuck, so you can spare me your bullshit about destiny, duty, and honor."

"Miss Granger—"

But she wasn't listening. "You weren't there. You didn't see what we saw. You didn't smell the blood, or the burning flesh, or hear the screams of your dying friends. You didn't have to comfort people when they lost hope, or hold the hands of the dying because there was no one else to do it."

"I know, Miss Granger."

"No you don't. You don't know, that's what I'm saying," she said. "How can you. You're dead, and safely beyond the reach of it all."

"Miss Granger—"

"They all think I'm mad, you know," she said conversationally.

He smiled faintly. "Yes, they had quite the same opinion of me when I was alive."

She narrowed her eyes at him, then sat back and crossed her arms beneath her breasts. "I never said I wasn't mad, Dumbledore," she said, "only that they think it."

"Miss Granger," Dumbledore said patiently, "I really don't think—"

"You don't get to control this conversation," she snapped. "You're in _my_ head. Best you remember that next time you get the urge to mind-fuck someone."

_"Granger!"_

Hermione looked up at the sound of that voice as though she expected to see Draco Malfoy floating in the air above her head. There was nothing but swirling white and blue sky.

_"Granger, wake up!"_

"That would be Mister Malfoy, I believe," Dumbledore said. He calmly took a lemon drop from the dish and put it in his mouth. "You've become quite friendly with him, so I've heard."

"I guess that answers the question about whether or not dead men tell tales," she said, eyeing him with distaste. "I killed his father, you know. In the war."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"You mourn for him?" Dumbledore sounded skeptical.

She smiled sadly. "No," she said. "Not him. But when I killed him, I lost my innocence, and I mourn for that."

"You blame yourself too much for things that were always beyond your control, Miss Granger," Dumbledore said.

"What right did you—any of you—have to expect such things from us?" she whispered. "We were children, Dumbledore, not warriors."

"In times of war it is often necessary for children to become warriors, Miss Granger."

Hermione shoved back from the table and angrily got to her feet. She turned away from him, then abruptly turned back. "You know, one of my only regrets is that Snape killed you before I could," she told him.

She had the satisfaction of seeing his shining blue eyes widen in shock before she heard Draco calling her again.

_"God Damn you, Granger, wake up!"_

"Goodbye Dumbledore," she said. "And stay the fuck out of my head."

"Goodbye, Miss Granger," he said. "And try not to be too hard on yourself about . . ."

But she wasn't listening anymore. She opened her eyes and he was gone.

"Granger? Granger, are you alright?"

She got up and stretched. "I'm fine."

He sighed, sounding relieved. "Damn but you can be shrill," he said. "No wonder Weasley was so keen on you. You sound just like his blessed mother when you're angry."

"Do I really?" she asked, amused.

"Yes," he said. He was quiet for a few minutes, then asked, "So Dumbledore, huh?"

"What?"

"You were screaming about Dumbledore," he clarified. "In your sleep."

"Oh."

"So tell me; would you really stuff his balls down his throat if you had the chance?"

"Yes," she said. She was completely serious. "But I'd peel them with a dull knife first."

Draco cringed. "That's disgusting, Granger. I never would have taken you for a sadist."

She pressed her hands to the middle of her back and arched. There was a satisfying crackle. "Shows what you know, then, doesn't it?"

"Yeah, I guess."

_"Mother! Mother, where are you!"_

"Shut the fuck up you whining momma's boy!" Draco shouted back at the Mother Crier.

_"Mother?"_ the Mother Crier shouted back, sounding hopeful. _"Is that you, Mother?"_

"No, I aint your fucking mother, you twit!"

_"Mother, I'm sorry! Mother, help me!"_

"I skull-fucked your mother!" Draco screamed back. "And she liked it!"

"Oh, for Christ's sake, Malfoy, your only encouraging him," Hermione said.

He snorted.

_"Mother, please!"_

"I'd give just about anything for my wand right about now," Draco muttered. "He's been doing that for hours."

"Just ignore him," she suggested.

Draco grumbled something under his breath.

_"Mother!"_

"Why don't you try being his mother for an hour or two, Granger?"

"You know, if you weren't so stuck up, Malfoy, you could have a lot of fun with him."

"What are you babbling about, Granger?"

"He thinks you're his mother," she reminded him.

"Yeah?"

"And he'd do anything to please his mother."

_"Mother!"_ the Mother Crier screamed as if to confirm this. _"Please talk to me Mother!"_

"What the hell could I possibly want from him?" Draco demanded.

"You could always tell him how happy it would make you if he were to bash his brains out on his cell wall."

Draco was silent for a long time.

_"Mother! Oh God, Mother, please help me!"_

"You are evil, Granger," Draco said at last.

"Why, for suggesting something so vile?"

"No," he said. "Because I'm seriously considering it."


	8. In which Hermione has a Visitor

**A/N:** I have received a couple of reviews and several messages about the dream scene in the last chapter. I am sorry if you do not like the way I have chosen to portray Dumbledore. I would like to suggest that if it bothers you that much, stop reading this story. I promise you that I am not going to change it or him in further chapters. This is not a cheery, lemon-drops-and-flowers kind of fic. I am not interested in writing that kind of thing. If that is the kind of story you mistakenly thought this was going to be (though God knows why when there was someone already dead in the first damn chapter), then you should turn back now. There are hundreds of very nice, sweet, romantic fics on this site, and most of their Dumbledores are good guys. This is not one of them./Also, for those of you who do not like the way I have portrayed Hermione's character, I would like to remind you that this story takes place twelve years after the end of HBP, and eight years after the end of the war. Hermione is no longer a little girl, she is a twenty-nine-year-old woman. I never said Dumbledore was evil. Never. This story is written in third person narrative, but for the most part, the opinions are those of Hermione, who is my main character. I think that I have been honest with these characters to the best of my abilities./I also know that there are only a few people who think these things, and that these are not the opinions of everyone who has read this. My love to all of you. I just thought I could save some time and aggravation by responding to this for one final time, instead of answering all of them individually. Forgive me for taking up so much space with this A/N, now on with the story.

* * *

Sometime later, perhaps as much as a week—she still wasn't sure about the passage of time—Hermione was once again standing alone, chained to that heavy wood table, waiting for a visitor. When Mad-Eye Moody walked in, Hermione just stared at him with her mouth open. He wasn't the last person in the world she had expected (that honor went to Ron himself, for obvious reasons), but he was pretty far down on the list.

"In a helluva fix, aren't you Granger?" he said in his gravelly voice. His wood leg made thick clunking sounds on the stone floor as he crossed the room and sat down in the chair across from her.

She stared at him. She didn't really know what she was waiting for. Maybe for him to condemn her as a murderess like everyone else, or abruptly shout CONSTANT VIGILANCE! at the top of his voice.

He didn't do either of these things. He sat down, folded his scared hands in his lap and looked at her with his one beady brown eye. The other one, the large blue eye, was swirling around crazily in his head. "Why don't you close your mouth Granger? I do believe I feel a draft on my nether regions."

She closed her mouth with a sharp click, then laughed. "You always did know how to make an entrance, Alastor," she said.

"Practice, Granger," he said. "Lots of practice. Now, how about you tell me just what the ruddy hell's going on here."

"Didn't you hear? I'm a murderer."

He made a rude snorting sound at that. "I know you better than that, Granger. And you should know me better than that by now. Don't expect me to believe such tripe. You may be a killer, but you're not a murderer."

She sighed, and for what felt like the millionth time, said, "I don't remember."

"You don't remember," he repeated. "Yeah, I read that part in the paper. Didn't believe it much though. As I recall, you had a pretty sharp mind about you, Granger. Not one for forgetting things."

He said this in a thoughtful way, like he was considering the possibilities. She could almost see his quick mind working, beating at the problem without mercy. It made her smile and remember standing shoulder to shoulder with him, wands drawn, Death Eaters circling them. His quick wit and experience had saved them then, and she found herself hoping that maybe he could do it again.

"DARK MAGIC!" he suddenly barked, causing her to jump. "I'd bet my eye on it. What's wrong with you, Granger, letting someone get the drop on you like this? You're one of the best there is, the best I've ever seen. What did I always tell you? CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

She couldn't help the amused smile that sprang to her lips.

"You think this is funny, Granger?" he demanded.

"No sir," she said.

"Bet your ass it's not," he said with a satisfied nod. "Damn shame, really. A war hero locked up in Azkaban. A shame. And just look at you. You look like shit Granger, and that's an understatement."

"Thanks, Moody," she said. "You're such a charmer."

"Well, just look at ya," he said, gesturing at her with one knarled hand. "You've lost so much weight you look like you're swimming in an elephant skin. Aren't they feeding you? They damn well better, or by God, I'll—"

"You can't do anything, Moody," she said. "Not in here. They didn't listen to me, they sure as shit aren't going to listen to a crazy old dog like you."

His one beady little eye narrowed. "We'll see about that, Granger," he said. "Goddamn Ministry's gone in the toilette since Scrimgeour became Minister. Almost makes me wish for the days when Fudge ran the place. He was incompetent, no doubt, but this—" he waved his twisted hand at her again "—this is wrong."

"How did you hear about this anyway," Hermione asked him. "I thought you were in Paris, looking for Lupin."

Lupin had gone crazy after Tonks was killed in a little skirmish in Italy. They had gone, Moody, Lupin, Tonks, Fred, George, and Hermione, to rescue Olivander, the wand maker. Fred had been killed, and so had Tonks. George had become quiet and reserved, and Lupin had just gone feral. The last time anyone had seen him was ten years ago, and he had been running through the forest on all fours, chasing down dear and rabbits, and whatever other creatures unfortunate enough to cross his path.

"Did you find anything?" she asked. "Did you find him?"

"Nah," he said. "False lead, just like all the rest. There's none better at not being found when he doesn't want to be found than Remus. He's a good man. He probably thinks he's doing us a favor, staying away. Good man, but a real bastard as a wolf."

Hermione had to agree there. For the last eight years, since the war had ended, she and some of the other Order member had been trying to find Lupin, but thus far, he had eluded them all.

"Owl brought me the post in my hotel room, and there you are, blinking up at me from the front page of The Daily Prophet," Moody said. "That Skeeter woman really can write a load of shite when she puts her quill to it, can't she?"

Hermione chuckled. "What did she say?"

"Some rubbish about you killing Weasley in a moment of passion, and—"

"What!" Hermione had thought she was above caring what anyone said about her. She knew that none of it was true, so it didn't matter. So she had thought, but this . . . "That makes it sound like I stabbed him to death in the middle of sex. That's the most revolting, preposterous—"

"I said it was a load of shite, didn't I?" Moody said. "Weasley's been seeing that silly chit Lavender Brown again. Besides, anybody that knows you two, knows that you haven't been together since that night—"

"But people believe it," Hermione said.

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Some do. But some will believe most anything, Granger, you know that. As long as it's in black and white, it must be true, right?"

Hermione put a trembling hand to her forehead and prayed that what she was feeling was not the onset of a headache. They didn't give out ibuprofen in Azkaban. "I have to get out of here, Alastor. I'm going to go crazy soon, if I don't."

"Paper said that about you to," Moody said. "I have to say, Granger, I found that a hell of a lot more believable than you slicing and dicing Weasley."

"I'm glad someone believes me, Moody," she said tiredly. "Even if it is a crazy old dog like you."

He grinned, though it looked more like a grimace on his twisted features. "Off with ya, Granger. You're going to make this crazy old dog blush."

She snorted.

"So tell me what you do remember," he said. "Exactly. What's the last thing you recall doing?"

She thought about it for a minute. "I made tea," she said at last. "Earl Grey with lemon, no cream—"

"Come on, Granger, don't give me a damn menu here. What happened?"

She glared at him. "You said 'exactly'," she reminded him. "I'm giving you the details."

"You can skip the consistency of your tea then," he said wryly.

"Fine, fine," she muttered. "What next? Oh, then I got a book from the shelf. It was—oh, you probably don't need to know that either. So, I was reading, drinking my tea, and the fire was—"

"Fire?" Moody interrupted.

"Well, yes," she said. "I lit the fire when I got finished doing research for the day. I'm helping Guenevere Bloodstone with this book on the properties of—"

"The fire, Granger," Moody reminded her. "What kind of fire was it?"

"What do you mean, what kind of fire was it?" she asked. "It was just a fire. It was a bit chilly when I got home from the library, so I lit a fire, made some tea, and sat down to read a book, and that's the last thing I remember. Next thing I know, I'm in a bed holding a knife, I've got blood all over me, Ron's dead, and there's a pack of Aurors pointing wands at me and shouting."

"A fire," Moody mused to himself. "Connected to the floo network?"

"Of course."

"A fire," he said again.

She rolled her eyes. Maybe it was about time to start reevaluating the depth of Moody's madness. "Moody, what—?"

"Got to go, Granger," he said, abruptly getting to his feet. "I'll be by to see you again in a few days. Don't think you'll lose all your marbles in the meantime, do you?"

It was a very real possibility. "I might have a few left," she said with a smile. "Moody, what are you thinking?"

"Thinking the same thing I thought when I walked in here," he said. "Only now I got something to look into. Take care of yourself, Granger, and remember, CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

"How could I forget," she said as she watched him limp out of the room.


	9. In which there is a Second Visitor

Hermione was getting tired of standing. She almost wished the guard would come and take her back to her cell so she could sit down. Almost.

When the door opened again, it was not the guard coming back for her, it was Blaise Zabini, looking tall, expensive, and dark as ever.

"Two visitors in one day," she said. "Aren't I just popular."

"Glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humor, Miss Granger," Zabini said, settling into the chair recently vacated by Mad-Eye Moody. "You're going to need it."

"Is that so?" she asked. "And why would that be, Mr. Zabini?"

"I have a hearing scheduled for you at the end of next week."

Hermione groaned and rubbed her forehead again. Yep, it was no longer just a possibility, but a certainty. She was going to have one bugger of a headache. "It won't do one damned bit of good, Zabini," she said. "Do you know how many hearings I went to?"

"Before the Wizengamot," he said, ignoring her question.

She looked up and stared at him. "What?"

"The Wizengamot," he repeated patiently. "Really, Miss Granger. I know you are a muggleborn, but still—?"

"I know what the Wizengamot is, you prat," she snapped. "But they've already heard my case. How did you get them to listen to it again?"

He smiled at her enigmatically. "I have ways, Miss Granger."

"I doesn't matter," she said. "If Scrimgeour is running it again like last time, It will make no difference. They'll send me right back in here, twice as convinced as before that I'm guilty."

"But Scrimgeour isn't running it this time, Miss Granger," Zabini said. "Scrimgeour is out of the country on other, more important business. You will be heard by the Chief Warlock himself, and this time, I will be there."

"Fat lot of good that will do."

He sighed and sat back in the chair. "Miss Granger, I know how very intelligent you are. I know how well read you are. I know that you have published six books of varying success in the last eight years and co-wrote countless others. I know all of this makes you believe that you are qualified to conduct your own defense, and if this were just a simple matter of misuse of magic or a spell gone awry, then you would be right. However, this is a murder case, a very highly publicized murder case, and so I would advise you to . . . well, take my advice."

"And what would that be?" she asked.

"Shut up."

She blinked at him. "Excuse me?"

"I said 'shut up'," he repeated. "It's really very simple. You are a celebrated war hero, people look up to you, they admire you, they respect you, but whenever you open that pretty little mouth of yours, it gets you into trouble. You make people feel stupid or foolish, and though Christ knows, they often are, they don't like it when you rub their noses in it."

She felt like smacking him. That she did not do this was more a testament to how heavy the chains around her wrists were than to her self control. "Oh yeah, Zabini, and you're such a good ol' boy. You make everyone feel right at home with your Armani robes and your stuck-up Italian accent. It's not my fault if most people have less intelligence than a squashed flobberworm."

"But if they are in a position of authority, it is your fault if you make them feel like that. If they have power over you, and you make them feel stupid, you are handing them the axe with which they will chop off your head."

She grumbled something unintelligible under her breath.

"What was that?" he demanded.

"None of your damned business, Zabini," she said. "Fine, I'll—I'll let you talk to them then. I won't say a word."

"Swear it."

"What?"

He smiled. "I want you to promise me that you will not say anything at the hearing unless I say it is alright."

She hesitated, then gave up and said, "I promise I won't say anything unless you say I can."

"Even if you are provoked beyond all reason," he added with a knowing glint in his black eyes.

"But what if—?"

"Even if you are provoked," he repeated sternly.

"Fine, yes, even if I am provoked," she said monotonously. "God, you can be such a fucking wanker sometimes."

He laughed. "Likewise, Granger."

She sighed and leaned on her hands on the table, then looked up at him through the tangled curtain of her hair. "You're going to get me out of here, aren't you Zabini?"

His expression softened a little. "I'm going to do my very best, Miss Granger."

"What are my chances, do you think?"

He hesitated.

"Say on a scale of one to ten."

"Maybe five," he said reluctantly.

"That high, huh?"

He smiled grimly and stood up. "Like I said, Miss Granger; it's a good thing you've still got a sense of humor. You're going to need it."

"Don't be such a pessimist, Zabini. Look on the bright side. If I lose, you still get paid, don't you?"

"Yeah," he said. "But I'm a good lawyer, Miss Granger. I really want to win."

She smiled at him kindly. "Then you're half-way there, aren't you?"

He stared at her thoughtfully for a few seconds, then said, "You know, it's usually me handing out encouragement and false-hope, not my clients."

"But I'm not your client, Zabini. Harry Potter is, remember?"

He frowned as he was leaving, but when the guard came to take her back to her cell, Hermione was smiling. Zabini really did have a very nice ass.


	10. In which Hermione Gains some Perspective

That night Hermione dreamed about Dumbledore again, but this time, when she woke up, she didn't remember it. Once again, her screaming and cursing made Draco yell at her until she woke up.

"I'm fine," she said when he asked. She got up and began pacing in the darkness. She did not like confined spaces under the best of circumstances, and this was far from the best of circumstances. "I'm fine," she said again, not sure if she was trying to convince him or herself.

"You know," Draco said conversationally, "you've got this hate thing for Dumbledore that I just don't understand, Granger. I thought he was like the Gryffindors' shining emblem or something. But you act like he . . . Well . . . Care to explain that to me?"

She paused in her pacing. "He got us into the war," she said at last. "Him and that fucking Tom Riddle. They killed off our parents' generation, then sat around biding their time for us to get out of nappies and . . ." She stopped and took a deep breath, then said, "He stole our childhoods. He stole _my _childhood."

"Granger, that may be the stupidest fucking thing I have ever heard you say."

She whirled in his direction and angrily marched right up to where the vent was. "How dare you? What the bloody hell would you know about it Malfoy? All safe and sound with your Death Eater friends. Protected by your richer than God daddy and—"

His arm shot through the bars and he grabbed the front of her tunic and pulled her up against the wall. Her face was pressed against the iron bars and she could feel the moisture of his breath on her mouth. "You've never had to lay in your room at night waiting for your father to sneak into your bed," he said softly, and with such anger that his voice was shaking. "You've never had to lay there clutching your pillow, hoping he wouldn't, just this once, and knowing that he would. Your father's never touched you the way you're only meant to be touched by a lover or a willing friend. His mouth on you, his fingers inside you, his—"

"Enough!" Hermione gasped. She wrenched out of his grasp and stood shaking, trying to wipe the hateful images from her mind, and almost certain that they would stay with her forever. "Enough."

"Then don't give me any of your shit about your stolen childhood, Granger," he growled. "Don't go telling me what I know and what I don't. You're not the only one who's suffered."

"Were you ever really a Death Eater at all, Malfoy?" she asked him softly.

He gave a bark of laughter. "Don't go thinking that just because my father used me like a whore that I'm a good person, Granger. I'm not."

"Is that a yes then?"

"No Granger, it is not a yes," he said. A while later he asked, "Would you believe me if I said I wasn't?"

She thought about it. "You have the Dark Mark, don't you?"

"I did. It's gone now. Just a scar."

"I don't know, Malfoy," she confessed. "Maybe."

"Yeah," he said. "And maybe not."

"Look, you asked, I'm just telling you—"

"Forget it," he said.

"I'm sorry," she said, not sure if she was apologizing for not believing him or feeling sorry for him because of what he had told her.

He didn't say anything and she heard the sound of his footsteps retreating from the vent.

It was probably an hour or so later that she heard him say her name and cautiously moved back to the vent, wary in case he grabbed her again.

"What?" she asked.

"Who was your visitor?"

"Mad-Eye Moody," she said. "But—"

"Moody! That bastard's still alive?" he said. "How the hell old is he?"

"I have no idea."

"He put me in here, you know," he said. "When they first started catching Death Eaters at the beginning of the war."

"How long have you been in here?" Hermione asked him.

"I don't know exactly. I was put in here about two years after the war started, so that would be . . ."

"Ten years," she said, feeling a little sick.

"Really? That long? Feels longer in some ways though."

She could imagine.

"So what did he want?"

"He thinks I'm innocent. He had some idea about a fire—"

"Him too?"

"What?"

"He thinks you're innocent too," he said. "It sounds like your getting quite the little pack of supporters, Granger."

"Look, if you're going to be an asshole, I'll just—"

"No, no, sorry, Granger, but old habits die hard, you know," he said quickly. "What else were you going to say?"

"I was just going to say that I have a hearing next week. Zabini said that—"

"Who did you just say?" Draco asked sharply.

"Jesus, Malfoy, will you let me get one fucking sentence out without inter—"

"Granger, damn it, who?"

"My lawyer, Malfoy," she said patiently.

"Blaise Zabini is your lawyer?"

Hermione went still, her eyes widening even in the dark. "Oh my God," she said. "You know him, don't you? I forgot. He was in your house at Hogwarts, he—"

"Listen to me, Granger," he hissed, gripping the bars of the vent in his excitement. "You have to talk to him. You have to tell him I'm in here. That I need his help. Can you do that?"

"But will he—?"

"Please, Granger, will you do it?"

"Yes, of course I will," she said.

He sighed and let go of the bars. "Thank you," he said. He knew hope was an awful, terrible, useless thing in Azkaban, that the ones who hoped were the first to go mad, but he couldn't help it; for the first time in a very long time he had hope. "Hey Granger?"

"What?"

"Looks like I might be collecting on that deal of ours pretty soon."

She didn't have anything to say to that, so she sat down with her back against the wall to think.

He laughed into the silence and moved away from the vent. For the first time in ages he fell asleep and did not have nightmares.


	11. Of Hot Hands and Ghostly Weasels

Waiting to see Zabini again was probably one of the hardest things she'd had to do in a long time. Now that she had something to tell him, something to say, something useful, she was stuck waiting for him for what felt like eons. It didn't help one goddamn bit either that she thought she might be starting to go a little mad. Well, more mad than she already was.

The darkness and the confined area had finally started to get to her. She was seeing things, and hearing things, and sometimes even feeling things that logically she knew were not there. Could not be there.

_"Hermione."_

"What," she whimpered. She was curled up in a corner of the room, away from the vent between her cell and Draco's, with her knees tucked up and her face pressed into them.

_"Hermione."_

"Go away," she said. "You're not real. You're dead. Go away."

_"Hermione,"_ Ron's voice whispered to her out of the dark. _"Hermione, I forgive you."_

"I didn't kill you, you bastard," she hissed. "Though God knows, you almost deserved it. But I didn't kill you."

_"Hermione . . . you don't know that."_

"Yes I do."

_"You don't remember."_

"I don't have to remember!"

There was silence as her voice echoed in the small cell. Somewhere the Mother Crier started to scream. Somewhere, Draco was cursing her and asking what the fuck was going on, Granger.

"I don't have to remember," she repeated. "I know I wouldn't, I couldn't, I . . ."

_"How can you be so sure?"_

"Because I know myself, and I'm not a murderer."

_"Some might disagree with you. Some might say you've murdered a lot of people."_

"Like who?" She was crying now, the tears running silently down her cheeks and wetting the knees of her trousers. "Who?"

_"Lucius Malfoy."_

She stopped crying and glared at the dark outline of the figure that was speaking. "I'd kill him again if I had half a fucking chance," she rasped. "That wasn't murder, that was justice."

_"You tortured him."_

"I enjoyed it."

_"Yes, you did."_

She was shaking so violently that she had to twist her fingers in the loose fabric of her trousers to make them be still.

She remembered that night, nine years ago, when she caught Lucius Malfoy with a small group of Death Eaters, sneaking into their camp. She killed the others quickly, but not him, no. He sneered at her and called her mudblood in that disgustingly cultured voice, and she looked directly into his pretty grey eyes and whispered _Crucio!_ then stood there almost impassively and watched him writhe and scream.

She wouldn't have stopped either, except that Ron and Moody, alerted by Lucius screams, had insisted that she stop. She had, not because of the sick and angry look on Ron's freckled face, but because of the strange look on Moody's. He had looked disappointed and almost sad.

"We'll take him back," Ron said. "He can go to Azkaban for what he's done, Hermione. There has to be justice. We can't be like them, we have to be merciful."

Moody's twisted lips had twitched with amusement at that, and looking back, she is almost certain that he knew before she said the word, exactly what she was going to do.

"You can be merciful, Ron," she said. She looked back at Lucius, who was on his knees and panting.

He lifted his head and glared at her. "Do it, girl, if you think you can," he said. She smiled, her wand still pointed at him, and said simply, "_Avada Kedavra_."

That was the same night Arthur Weasley was killed, but they didn't learn that until later. Ron called her a monster. He slapped her. He shook her. And she let him. He walked away from her then because he said that if he didn't he might hurt her. He never tried to touch her again.

"_You had no right,"_ Ron said now. The dead Ron. The Ron who wasn't there.

"Leave me alone," she said.

"_You had no right."_

"I had every right. We were at war."

"_That excuses nothing."_

"No, but I'm not a murderer."

"_Don't lie to yourself, Hermione. It may have been war, but that doesn't make it any less murder."_

"He killed our friends," she hissed. "How can you defend him?"

"_We killed his friends."_

She said nothing. She wished he would go away. Leave her alone. "I'm not a murderer," she said again.

"_Bellatrix Lestrange."_

She squeezed her eyes tightly closed and pressed her face hard into her knees.

"_Fenrir Greyback." _

She laughed softly.

"_Severus Snape."_

"I didn't kill Snape," she whispered in a rough, parched voice. "Harry killed Snape. You were there, you saw, it wasn't me, it was—"

"_If you had not interfered, he would not be dead."_

"But Harry would be."

"_Possibly."_

"Then that was self defense, not murder," she said.

"_You are responsible."_

"Leave me alone!"

"Granger!" Draco screamed at her, finally breaking through her daze to be heard.

She looked around for the silhouette, but the dead Ron was gone. She whimpered and gratefully rested her head back on her knees.

"Granger, you fucking loon, what the hell are you doing in there? Who are you talking to?"

"Nobody, Malfoy."

"Nobody my ass, Granger. I heard you. Are you cracking up in there?"

She laughed.

"Granger, goddamn it, answer me."

She giggled. It was just too funny.

"Granger, don't lose it, alright. Please. I need you. You're no good to me if you go bat-shit."

_Bat-shit_. She snorted.

"Granger, I swear to Christ if you don't pull it together—"

"You'll do what? Kill me?" She laughed again. "That might be rather counterproductive for you, don't you think?"

"Shit," he said. "You are losing it, aren't you? Granger, come on, keep it together. Just a little longer."

"I don't know if I can," she said in very small voice. "The dead . . ."

"What?" he said. "What about the dead. Come on, Granger, talk to me. What about them?"

"They won't leave me alone."

Draco felt a bolt of sheer panic at these words. Not so much the words themselves, but the sweet, almost childlike way she said them. "Granger, don't you cave on me. Are you hearing dead people?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

"Dumbledore . . ."

"Bastard," he muttered under his breath. "Who else?"

"Ron."

"Oh please, Granger, you're tougher than that. Kick that weasel's ghostly ass for him and he'll leave you alone."

"Can't."

"Why not?"

"He's not really there."

"Well at least that's something," Draco said. "If you know he's not really there, then you're not all the way crazy, Granger."

For some reason she didn't find this very comforting. "I'm a murderer."

"No you're not."

"I am. I killed people."

"You're not a murderer."

"Lots of people."

"Were they trying to kill you?"

She thought about it for a minute. "Yes."

"Then you're not a murderer."

"They're still dead."

He sighed in frustration and swiped a hand through his long dirty hair. "Granger, what happened to the kick ass, I'm not gonna take that shit, Dumbledore can shove his lemon drops up his asshole, woman I know and love. Snap out of it."

It was the sharp, almost angry tone of his voice more than the words themselves that made her focus. "Malfoy?"

"Granger? Are you alright?"

She laughed. She was probably the farthest thing from 'alright' that she had ever been in her life. "I'm fine."

He let out a breath. "Good. That's good."

She crawled across the floor and used the wall to pull herself upright. She put her hand through the bars of the vent and felt her fingertips brush his face. He grabbed her hand and laced his fingers through hers almost desperately. He pressed the back of her hand to his mouth, and she thought he was going to kiss it, but instead, he pressed his teeth into the knuckles.

She didn't try to pull away. It wasn't painful, and it was the human contact that she needed. When she felt his tongue slide over the ball of her thumb, she gasped and jerked her hand involuntarily.

"What are you doing?"

"What does it feel like I'm doing, Granger?" he whispered. He brushed his teeth along her wrist, then down each of her fingers.

She shivered and the sensation shot straight to her belly. "Jesus . . . Malfoy, I think I . . . need my hand . . . back now."

She had never considered the erotic possibility of hands before. It was interesting, and sort of nice, but they had a thick stone wall between them, and goddamn it, crazy or not, what he was doing was making her hot as hell.

"Malfoy, stop it," she said, her breath thick in her throat.

"Mmm. Sorry Granger," he said. He took his mouth away from her hand and just held it. "Couldn't help myself."

She was shaking, but not from fear anymore. From something else completely. The fact that he was no longer licking her fingers didn't even seem to help.

"You alright, Granger?" He sounded almost smug.

"You son of a bitch," she said with a breathless laugh.

He laughed. "Just trying to give you a reason to stay in the present, Granger."

"Yeah," she said. She was all achy and sensitive, and she was on the other side of a foot thick impenetrable wall from the one thing that could fix it. It was damn frustrating. "Yeah, well, it worked."

"Really?"

"Don't sound so proud, you fucking prat. It hasn't gotten you anything, has it?"

"Got your attention, didn't it?"

She didn't say anything to that. He already knew the answer.

"Besides, now I know what pretty little hands you have, Granger. This will help my fantasies a lot, I can tell you."

She laughed. The achy feeling in her lower belly did not abate. "I am going to get you for this, Malfoy."

"I look forward to it, Granger," he said.


	12. In which Zabini Becomes a god Among Men

For once, the sound of the key in the lock did not wake her and Hermione came awake when the guard's boot connected solidly with her ribs.

"Get up, you."

"Sir!" a familiar accented voice said sharply.

She gasped and got to her hands and knees, trying to force air back into her lungs through pain that felt like it was growing.

"If you do that again," Zabini told the guard in a hard, angry voice, "I'll have your job."

"Now listen here, you . . ."

"Yes, what exactly were you going to call me?" Zabini asked, his dark eyes gleaming. The look on his face and the antagonistic stance fairly shouted 'just give me a fucking reason'.

"Nothin'," the guard mumbled.

Hermione coughed and glared up at him through the curtain of her hair.

Zabini crouched on his heels beside her and helped her to her feet. "Are you alright?"

"People keep asking me that," she said, "when the answer quite obviously is no."

"And still you have your sense of humor, I see."

"That wasn't a joke, Zabini."

The guard came forward with the manacles and Zabini practically snarled at him. "I hardly think we will need those right now," he said.

"It's regulations," the guard insisted.

"How is she supposed to get dressed with those things on her arms?"

"I take 'em off, she gets dressed, I put 'em back on," the guard said.

The unspoken implication being that he would stand there and watch her do it. Only because she might try something, of course.

Zabini wasn't buying it, not for one goddamn minute. "I don't think so."

"I can't just let her loose to—"

Zabini stood in front of Hermione so she couldn't see his face, but she didn't need to. The tone of his voice said it all. "Sir, this is Azkaban Fortress. Its security is tighter than a vestal virgin. I hardly think that even Miss Granger, unarmed, and without her wand, in her current state of malnourishment and near dehydration, is going to instigate a prison break."

Hermione felt like cheering. _Score one for Zabini. That's one Zabini/ zilch for the creepy ugly Dungeon Master._

"Rules is rules," the guard said stubbornly.

Zabini had had enough. "Listen you inbred little half-wit," he snapped, and she couldn't help but notice that even silly little insults sounded downright sexy coming out of his mouth, "I'm taking her out of here without those things on. She's going to take a shower, without you bloody well watching. And then she's going to put the clothes on that I brought for her, also without you watching. And then, I'm taking her out of here, and you are welcome to accompany her, but if you touch her or so much as utter a single syllable, I will have a report drawn up immediately, and you will lose your job. Is this all clear to you?"

The guard blinked in surprise between her, tiny and quite content to hide behind Zabini for the time being, thank you very much, and Zabini, who towered over him like a dark colossus.

Zabini snapped his fingers in front of the guard's face to get his attention. "We have a hearing in less than an hour. I don't think you want to know what I will do to you if you make me late."

The guard swallowed audibly. Then nodded and preceded them out of her cell and down the hall.

Outside of the shower room, as the guard was fiddling with his keys to find the right one, Zabini gave her a little canvas bag with clothes and some toiletries in it. She took them gratefully and gave him a smile that she hoped looked more sincere than it felt.

As the guard was fitting the key into the lock she remembered and said, keeping her voice low, "I need to talk to you about something."

"Later," he said and nudged her toward the shower room.

She looked at it with acute longing. "It's rather important."

"Hurry it up," the guard said irritably.

Zabini glared at him. "I'm afraid it will have to wait, Miss Granger. Now, you really must—"

"It's about Draco Malfoy," she said and watched his face go completely blank. "He . . . he asked me to tell you that he's in here. He wants me to say that . . . he needs your help. He—"

"Look Missy," the guard interrupted, "you gonna take your shower, or not. I don't got time for this nonsense."

Hermione glared at him—it occurred to her that he sounded very much like an American. All rude and gruff without any real wit about him—but she clutched her bag and went into the shower. She sent Zabini one last pleading look over her shoulder, but his expression was unreadable.

In the canvas bag she found soap, nice soap that smelled like roses and was probably very expensive. There was also shampoo, and—thank God—conditioner, and a brush and comb for her hair. There was also a little toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste, and she inwardly blessed Zabini as a god among men.

She brushed her teeth first, using the water from the shower. She used almost all of the toothpaste, savoring the clean taste of mint and the smoothness of her un-fuzzed teeth before she put them both away and grabbed the soap.

She scrubbed her skin all over with the soap, working it into her muscles and skin until there was nothing left but a tiny little shard, which she let disappear down the drain. Curiously, she ran her hands down her sides and felt her ribs. They weren't poking out like the ribcage of a starving African aborigine yet, but they were close to it. Another day or two of hard bread and water and the rare little sliver of jerked beef and they would be straining at her skin.

Hermione washed her tangled, oily hair three times with the shampoo, digging ruthlessly into her scalp until it almost hurt, then worked conditioner into it until she could get some of the worse tangles out with just her fingers. It would have been nice to have a detangling potion mixed in with the shampoo or conditioner, but magic of any kind was expressly forbidden to any of the prisoners of Azkaban. How did they know you weren't going to use a detangling potion to poison yourself, or make a daring escape? She snorted. But she had lived a perfectly ordinary muggle existence until her eleventh birthday, so she made due without it.

When she was done, when her hair felt clean and every inch of her skin felt tender and oversensitive, she turned off the water and dried herself with one of the towels by the door.

"Are you almost finished in there, Miss Granger?" Zabini asked through the door.

"Yes. I'll be out in a few minutes," she called back to him. She had almost forgotten about Zabini.

She pulled the clothes out of the bag and smiled with appreciation. She really shouldn't have been surprised, she supposed, considering that it was Zabini who had brought them for her. He had impeccable taste.

She put on the plain grey silk slacks and the creamy yellow blouse and looked down at herself. She really wished she had a mirror, but for most prisoners in Azkaban, their physical appearance was pretty low on their list of priorities. The slacks were a little big, so the waistline rested quite low on her hips. Conversely, the blouse was a bit tight across her chest.

_Zabini must think I'm a fat woman with small breasts_, she thought, though she didn't really believe that was the case. He had probably gotten her sizes from someone; maybe Harry or her mother—God she hoped it wasn't her mother—and when she was at Hogwarts, these clothes likely would have fit her just right. However, she'd filled out a little up top since then, and developed atrocious eating habits—like forgetting to eat at all—and you just didn't talk about those kinds of things with your parents and your best friend (if said friend were a man).

"Miss Granger, we are going to be late," Zabini said through the door.

"Oh." She huffed out a breath and attacked the tangles in her hair with the comb. She had used enough conditioner—almost all of the tiny little bottle—that the comb was soon parting the strands without catching. She shook her head to tease it out just a little, put on the slate grey robes Zabini had provided, threw the comb and the rest of the toiletries back in the bag, and knocked on the door to be let out.

It gave her a little thrill to see the stunned look on Zabini's face when she walked out of the shower room and handed the bag back to him. She was feeling clean, she smelled nice, she looked good—or at least half-way normal—and the best part was, she wasn't in cuffs. She was feeling positively cheerful, all things considered.

"I could really use a hair dryer, Zabini," she said. "Do you think you could maybe—?"

"I—They take my wand before I'm aloud back here, Miss Granger," he said, and he looked really sorry.

"Oh," she said. "Oh well. I guess it doesn't—what are you doing?"

The guard snapped the cuffs in place and grinned. "Regulations," he said.

She gave him her coolest glare—the one reserved for singularly stupid persons and annoying bugs just before she swatted them—and had the satisfaction of watching him flinch just a little. She had a feeling that he had just been rudely reminded of exactly who it was he was leering at. Being a war hero occasionally did have its perks, and scaring people with only a look was one of her favorites.

"My 'pologies Miss Hermione," he said quickly. "But them are the rules, and I have to follow 'em."

Zabini gave her a look somewhere between irritation—at the guard—and amusement—at her—and said, "We are going to be late, Miss Granger."

"Fine," she said. "Let's go then. The sooner we get there, to sooner I can get these thrice damned things off of me."

"Yes, I hope you are right," he said as they began walking down the hall behind the guard.

"Me too, Zabini," she said. "You have no idea."


	13. Of Warlocks and Griddlebones

**A/N:** I realize I made an error in chapter 11. I mentioned that Molly Weasley had been killed by Death Eaters, when in chapter 1, I clearly indicated that she was alive at the present time. Sorry, I have a tendency to be a bit slash-happy (as in _Friday the 13th_ not Harry and Draco getting it on in the Astronomy Tower). I fixed the problem after it was not-so-kindly pointed out to me by a friend of mine. I promise to try and restrain myself, really. But you know, the bodies are piling up in this one. I do believe the dead almost equal the living characters by now. Not quite yet, but almost.

* * *

Hermione sat patiently in the chair at the center of the court as a witch, who was a professional of something she was unable to pronounce, waved her wand around her and muttered a strange incantation. Her nails were biting into the palms of her hands with the effort, but goddamn it, she was being patient. And she had not yet screamed, cursed, or threatened to kill anybody yet. So she thought she was doing pretty good. Especially when the hag almost poked her in the eye with the tip of her wand.

She turned her head to the left and glared at Zabini, who was sitting in an elegant little arm chair he had conjured and looking bored. She looked down at her arms, which were once again chained to the chair in which she was sitting, in which she had sat through countless hours before, then back at her lawyer. He had gone down several enormous leaps from 'god among men' and was now hovering perilously close to 'sodding bastard".

He had explained to her in meticulous detail what she could expect at the hearing. The Wizengamot would question her and call witnesses. She was allowed to call witnesses of her own, if she had any—which of course she didn't—and she, or her representative—that would be Zabini, but she was seriously wondering if she were allowed to fire him. Or if she did, if he would listen—could question the witnesses called to testify against her. Hermione had already seen Molly and Ginny Weasley when she walked in; they had both testified against her last time. Molly had swayed more than a few people by muttering unintelligibly through her tears, and Ginny's righteous anger had done the rest.

So Zabini had explained the situation to her. But he had somehow failed to mention that she would be strapped down and forced to sit there while some deranged old bat with yellow and lime green polka-dot robes and shells braided into her hair brandished a wand under her nose.

"I am so going to make you pay for this, Zabini," she told him.

"Yes, and I'm sure I'm not the only one that you've said that to the last month or so, am I, Miss Granger?" he said.

No, he wasn't even the only person she'd said that to in the last week. She'd said it to Draco at least twice. "I'm going to have to start a list," she muttered.

He apparently heard her and grinned.

"What exactly is this nutter doing to me, Zabini?"

"She is searching for the memories of the day Ronald Weasley was killed," he said.

"She what?"

He sighed. "She is searching for the—"

"I heard you," she said. "This was your brilliant idea, wasn't it?"

"Actually, yes, it was," he smiled at her pleasantly. "Now stop frowning so much. You'll put people off."

Why was it that whenever the urge to strike him was at it's strongest, she was always chained down to something? "If I don't remember it, then how is she supposed to find it in my head? What if it isn't even there?"

"That is essentially what we are trying to determine," he said.

The witch suddenly stopped waving her wand and muttering and stood back with a deep frown on her wrinkled old face. She looked at Zabini, then walked over to him and whispered in his ear for nearly a full minute. As she did, Zabini's expression changed from bored to what could only be called triumphant.

"What is it? What did she find?" Hermione demanded.

He waved her off and stood to address the Chief Warlock and the rest of the Court. The muttering among the witnesses suddenly stopped as though a switch had been thrown.

The Chief Warlock, an older, dignified looking man with round gold rimmed spectacles and iron grey hair looked down at them and lifted a brow. His name was Tobias Skimble, and he looked like anyone's favorite uncle, but Hermione knew differently the instant she saw him. He had a look in his eyes that spoke of deep steel and something more, something she'd seen too many times in the eyes of men and women who had gone to war and never been able to come all the way back. It was a look she often saw when she looked in the mirror.

"Are you ready?" Skimble asked.

"Yes sir, I think we are," Zabini said.

"And your findings?" Skimble asked. "What are they?"

Zabini gestured for the old witch to come forward. She did so confidently. "They aint there," she said flatly.

The many witnesses in the benches all around the dungeon-like room began to mutter to each other excitedly. The noise became quite loud and finally Skimble raised his voice in a way that commanded obedience and said "SILENCE!"

And there was silence.

"Madam, what do you mean, they are not there?" Skimble demanded of the witch. "Do you mean to say that her memory has been modified?"

The witch looked at him like he was a simpleton. "I mean t' say," she said slowly, as though she were speaking to a child, "they aint there."

The commotion this time was much louder. Hermione thought she heard Ginny's voice amid all the racket shouting about injustice. She smiled grimly.

"I WILL HAVE SILENCE THIS INSTANT OR I WILL EMPTY THE COURT!" Skimble roared.

And, by God, there was silence and it was deafening.

"Now," he said calmly, "Madam—what is your name again, I'm sorry?"

"Velma Griddlebone," the woman said proudly.

"Yes, well, Madam Griddlebone, I am afraid you're going to have to explain just precisely what you mean to the Wizengamot."

She rolled her eyes expansively and Hermione decided she rather liked this Velma Griddlebone, even if the woman had almost maimed her with her wand. "What I mean is; the memories? The ones this la'yer wanted me t' search for? They aint there. There's this big space of nothin' where they's supposed t' be, but that's it."

The onlookers shifted like they could hardly contain themselves from chattering, but at a warning glare from Skimble, they quieted down. Nobody wanted to be ordered from the court. They'd miss this, and this . . . well, this was just too much. Hermione was sure that if Rita Skeeter was somewhere in the audience, her Quick-Quotes Quill was on the verge of exploding with excitement.

"Do you mean to tell the Wizengamot that the memories of the day in question have been removed?" Skimble asked.

"That's 'bout right, yeah," Velma Griddlebone said. "Someone took 'em."

Skimble sat back and for quite a long time, he discussed the matter with some of his fellow Wizengamot members.

"I thought they were going to call witnesses. Did you know this would happen?" Hermione asked Zabini when he returned to his seat beside her.

"I had hoped it might, yes," he said.

"This means I have to be innocent, doesn't it?" she asked him.

He smiled. "They may or may not bring in another witch or wizard to verify Mrs. Griddlebone's findings, but yes, that is likely the case."

Hermione smiled joyfully. "I could just kiss you, Zabini," she said. "You are a knight in shining armor, you are a prince, you are a god among men. I take back every unkind and purely hateful thought I have ever had about you. You are a saint."

"Miss Granger," he said, amused, "if you do not stop that, I may just kiss you myself to shut you up."

She laughed. "And I'm just happy enough right now, Zabini, that I'd probably let you."

"Miss Granger," Skimble said, returning to his seat and looking down at her in a way that made her distinctly uneasy. "Miss Granger, would you care to tell the Wizengamot the location of the memories that are missing?"

She gaped at him. "I—What?"

"The memories, Miss Granger," Skimble said impatiently. "Please tell us where they are."

"But—" She looked to Zabini for help, but he was staring at the Chief Warlock looking stunned. Apparently he had not anticipated this. "But, how would I know—I mean . . . I don't know where they are."

Skimble's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Miss Hermione Granger, are you refusing to tell the Wizengamot where you have hidden the memories which have been deliberately removed from your mind?"

"I—I—don't know what the hell you're talking about!" Hermione said, her voice rising on the second part of the sentence to almost a scream. Beside her, Zabini winced.

"Miss Granger, I am going to ask you one final time to reveal the location of your memories from the night of the murder in question."

"I already told you," she gritted out, "I don't know what the fuck you are talking about. I don't know where they are. Until today, I didn't even know they were removed."

Skimble gave her a pitying look and gestured for the guard that had accompanied her and Zabini to take her away. "Miss Hermione Granger, you will be returned to Azkaban Fortress until your sentence has been served or you change your mind and agree to cooperate with the Wizengamot."

"And if I did know where they were?" she asked him as the guard released the chains on the chair and snapped her manacles back on. "If I did know where they were and I could tell you, you would let me go?"

His lips drew back in a humorless smile. "No, Miss Granger, but we would consider granting you leniency."

"Zabini—" She snatched the sleeve of his robes. "Zabini, what do I do? What happens now?"

He looked between her and the Wizengamot, who were leaving the court room. "I don't know, Miss Granger," he said. "I really don't know."


	14. In which Moody Visits Again

Hermione lay on the floor of her cell curled into a half fetal position. She did not cry. The time when she could have pretended that tears would make any difference was long gone. She wouldn't even speak to Draco, until even he stopped trying and fell silent.

When she was first brought back, she had screamed and cursed and fought. She stopped fighting and screaming the moment the heavy metal door slammed behind her.

It was somehow worse than before. The dementors may have been gone from Azkaban, but something of them had stayed behind. The walls and floors and stones had absorbed some of their ability to suck the life and joy out of a person. She'd had hope, and for a moment, she had known freedom again, then it was mercilessly crushed out. If she had been left alone in her cell, if she had not had the hand of freedom extended to her for that brief moment, she could have held on. As it was, she knew she was going crazy and she almost welcomed it.

Draco Malfoy had not said a word to her or tried to get her attention for almost two days. A part of her knew that this was odd. That he might have decided not to speak to her for a couple of hours, but that in the end, he just wouldn't have been able to help himself. But her cell was silent, and so was his.

When the key jangled in the lock of her cell door, she shifted her eyes to it and watched it open without much interest.

"Get up," the guard barked. It was a different guard. It was always a different guard. "Get up, woman. You have visitors."

She closed her eyes for a second, then forced herself to get up. When the guard put the cuffs on her, she didn't protest. She didn't even flinch when they pinched her skin.

When she entered the room, Moody was already sitting at the table. He looked agitated, which was unusual. Not much got to Moody.

"Hello Alastor," she said.

"Granger," he said in his raspy voice. "Good to see you. You alright?"

She smiled faintly. "No, she said, then saw his expression and relented. "I'm fine," she lied.

"Well you don't look fine," he said.

She didn't say anything.

"They try to give you veritaserum?" he demanded.

"Yes, once," she said.

"You didn't let them, did ya?"

"No. I refused."

"Bet they didn't like that, did they?"

"No."

"Good, good," he muttered to himself. "Damn Ministry sods."

"It doesn't matter," she said serenely.

He gave her a sharp look, both of his eyes focused on her face. "Don't be stupid Granger, of course it matters. You did some pretty nasty things back in the war, we all did, and they're fine with 'em as long as they don't have to see or hear the specifics. You think they'd be so understanding if they knew you and the rest used the Cruciatus Curse on our captives all through the second half of the war? I don't bloody well think so, Granger. Even if they are grateful that you saved all their sorry little asses, now that it's over, they might just conveniently forget that part."

She smiled a little. "Yes, you're probably right."

"Of course I'm right," he grumbled. "Constant vigilance, Granger, CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

She didn't jump. "Yes," she said, then, "But not you, Moody."

"What's that?" he stared at her across the table. His blue eye was still on her, but she could see it tremble just a little as though it were trying to swirl erratically against his will. "What's that, Granger? Speak up."

"You never used an Unforgivable Curse," she said. "Never."

"No, I didn't," he said, but there was no pride in the statement. "I have my reasons, Granger, just like you had your reasons for doing it, I imagine."

"I did it because it was easier," she said. "I did it because sometimes I just wanted to. It felt good, you know. You can't imagine how powerful it can make you feel." She took a deep breath. "I'm not a good person, Moody."

"None of us are, Granger," he said gently. "We all do things we regret. It's human nature."

She laughed humorlessly. "But I don't regret it," she said. "I know I should. I know it was wrong, but I don't _feel_ it. Do you understand?"

She could tell from his expression that he didn't. He wanted to understand, and that helped, but he didn't. Whatever it was that kept him from using Unforgivable Curses even in the direst of times, he regretted it, and he could not understand someone who felt no regret or remorse. Especially not her. With the things she had done, regret should have been obligatory. It should have been stamped in her eyes and scrawled upon her headstone, but it wasn't, and he could not understand that.

"Did they try anything else on you?" he asked her finally. "Legilimency, or—"

"No." She still had that faint, disturbing smile on her face. "No. Someone told them that I am a skilled Occlumens so they decided it wasn't worth the trouble. I wonder who could have possibly given them that idea."

Moody grinned. "Had to do something, Granger. Can't have them walking around in that brain of yours. They might find something that's none of their damned business. Several somethings, probably."

"And if it hadn't worked?" she asked. "They would have found that I am a mediocre Occlumens at best, and stomped all over my mind. You might be in here with me then, instead of sitting on the other side of that table."

"Not me, Granger," he said. "Not Potter either, seeing as he's their little saint and savior. But George Weasley would be, and I know you wouldn't want that."

No. No she wouldn't want that. Poor George had gone more than a little crazy with grief after Fred was killed, and he'd taken his revenge the only way he could. She couldn't let them hurt him for that. She wouldn't. But sometimes, like now, she wished she weren't so fucking loyal.

"How is George, Moody?" she asked.

"The same as always, Granger." Moody said sadly. "He walks around that big house of theirs talking to the walls and any of the house elves that get too close to him. Poor little blighters. But they won't leave him, even when he throws socks at them and screams the damn house down."

"Any word on Lupin?" she asked him.

"Nothing."

She hadn't expected there would be, but she had to ask.

"Are you sure you're alright, Granger?"

"No, Moody," she said. She hadn't been joking when she said it the first time. Her sense of humor had recently taken a monster beating. "No, but I'll live."

"You haven't asked me about your case or what I've been up to," he pointed out. "Just seems odd to me is all."

"How's my case, Moody?" she said automatically. "What have you been up to?"

He rubbed his hands excitedly and leaned forward, as though the walls had ears and they were listening. "I checked the records on the floo network. Looks like someone came to see you the night Weasley was killed. One person visited your house, and less than ten minutes later, two people left your house. I figure, it could have been you and this other chap. What do you think?"

"I think you should go home and lay off the firewhisky, Moody," she said.

"I'm serious, Granger."

"So am I."

He stared at her contemplatively for a long minute until his blue eye couldn't stay still any longer and began to wander. "I heard about that bastard Draco Malfoy," he said at last.

That got her attention. "What about him?"

"Your lawyer, that Zabini bugger, found out he was in here," Moody said.

Well, yes, she knew that, as she was the one that told him. "And?" she prompted.

"And he got the little ferret out, that's what," Moody snapped.

Moody continued to talk, raging about justice and injustice—God she was getting sick of those words—but she wasn't listening anymore. There was a slight ringing in her ears and she was shaking.

"You alright, Granger?" Moody asked. "You're looking a wee bit peaked."

"I'm fine," she said again. She was enraged. Zabini hadn't gotten her out, he had lost his precious case, so he had turned away to something better. Something easier. It must have been no problem at all getting an accused ex-Death Eater out of prison. Nothing like trying to free an accused murderess. _Damn him. Damn him to everlasting hell._ Her fingers curled into claws. She was going to scratch his eyes out the next time she saw him. Ruin that pretty dark face of his so he would never be able to forget her. She might rot in Azkaban, but she would not do it quietly. Oh no.

"Well, I better get going then, Granger," Moody said, suddenly getting to his feet. "I told that man Skimble about what I found in the floo records. He says he'll look into it. He will to, you can count on it. Good man, Skimble. A fair man. He'll do right, you'll see."

"Yeah," Hermione said. She remembered the way the Chief Warlock had looked at her though, and she didn't feel much better. "Goodbye Moody."

"Goodbye, Granger," he said, limping across the room and pulling the door open. "And remember, CONSTANT VIGILANCE!"

"Yeah," she said. She was getting another headache.

The door didn't close behind him. Someone else came in after him, muttering excuse me Professor Moody, how are you? You're looking well.

Hermione looked up at the sound of Moody's cackling laugh being cut off by the cold finality of that closing door and the sound of soft footsteps on the stone floor approaching the table.

"Hello Hermione," Lavender Brown said. She was smiling.

"Hello Lavender," Hermione murmured. "Come to gloat?"

She laughed in a tinkling bells sort of way and settled into the chair. She smoothed her pretty pink and white robes down with her hands, then folded them together in her lap. "Only a little," she said.


	15. Of the Fine Line Between Love and Murder

Hermione studied Lavender across the heavy wood table. She looked pretty much the same as she remembered; all frills and lace, her hair arranged in cute little curls, her makeup applied with a light hand—or done so well that it looked that way—her mouth curved softly in a little cupid's bow, her eyes glowed in a way that hinted at laughter just waiting to bubble out.

It was disgusting.

"It's good to see you, Lavender," the lie came out easily and she thought Lavender believed it.

"Thank you," Lavender said in her smooth, practiced voice. "I would like to say the same about you, but under the circumstances—" she gestured to the dark, cold stone walls. "Under the circumstances, I'm sure you'll agree that it really isn't."

Hermione's eyes went cold and she stopped feigning politeness. "What do you want?"

"Oh, well, to see how you're doing, of course," she said.

"Of course," Hermione said sarcastically.

"So how are you doing?"

"Oh, I'm just peachy," she said.

Lavender's eyes welled up with tears and she lowered them to look at her hands in her lap. Hermione watched a tear fall with a light _plop_ onto her arm and felt a little ashamed of herself for being so catty.

"I'm sorry, Lavender, I didn't mean—"

"It's not you," she said with a sniff. "It's just . . . I miss him so much, and you . . ."

"I didn't kill Ron," Hermione said tiredly. "I don't expect you to believe me. Why should you? No one else does. But I didn't do it."

"I know you didn't," Lavender said. She smiled kindly at Hermione and wiped her eyes. It didn't smudge her makeup even a little bit. "I know."

Hermione regarded her curiously. The way she had said that, _I know you didn't_, sounded funny, though she couldn't pinpoint exactly why. "Well, I guess that's one more person I can add to the short list then," she said.

"The short list?" Lavender asked.

"Of people who believe I'm innocent," she clarified. "I currently have one mad ex-Auror, an ex-Death Eater, an ex-best friend, and now you. It's a short list, but a list all the same."

Lavender smiled. "You always were really witty," she said. "I think that's one of the reasons Ron loved you so much."

Hermione sighed. "Lavender, Ron wasn't in love with me. We hadn't even talked to each other in almost a year."

"He was in love with you," she said stubbornly. "He never said it, but I knew. I knew."

Hermione swallowed and suddenly remembered that Lavender hadn't been to any of the hearings or even the trial. Odd, considering she was Ron's girlfriend at the time.

"I could see it in his eyes, you know?" Lavender continued, staring past Hermione's shoulder. "When he made love to me, he always closed them, but sometimes, when he looked at me, when I was cooking, or reading a book at the table, it was almost like he didn't know who I was. Like he was seeing someone else. I knew it was you. _I knew it._"

"Lavender," Hermione heard her voice shake and tried to stop it. "Lavender, Ron didn't love me anymore. He . . . We didn't part on good terms. He didn't want me. He wanted you."

Lavender laughed and it wasn't a happy sound. It made the little hairs on the back of Hermione's neck stand up. "He settled for me because he couldn't have you anymore," she said roughly. She turned her gaze back to Hermione and she felt her heart still in her chest for an instant. "But he still loved you. It was you he wanted, not me. It was never me. It was you. It was always you—"

"Lavender," Hermione said sharply. She had to cut her off before the woman became hysterical. "Lavender, listen to me. Ron wasn't with me anymore. He was with you. Not me . . . He and I had a fight the night we split up. It was a bad one. He hit me and walked out. I never spoke to him again, and he never touched me again. He was not in love with me. In fact, I'd be willing to bet he almost hated me."

She laughed again in that high pitched, near-hysterical way. "He may have hated you, but he was still in love with you. I saw him look at you when he thought I didn't notice. When we went to parties after the war was over, and at the ceremonies where they gave you all your Order of Merlin—First Class, wasn't it?—his eyes always drifted to you. It was like he couldn't help it." She wiped her eyes again because, though she wasn't exactly weeping, the tears were still running silently down her face. "I would have given anything," she whispered fiercely, "_anything_, for him to look at me just once the way he looked at you."

"I'm sorry, Lavender," Hermione said. "I didn't know—"

"No, you didn't," she said. "How could you?"

"Lavender, what—?"

"That's why I had to do it, you know?" she said. Hermione felt her breath freeze in her lungs. "Because I loved him so much, but he didn't—he couldn't love me back."

"Lavender, what did you do?" Hermione asked slowly. _Oh God_, she thought_. Oh God, oh God, oh God._ "What did you do?"

"I killed him, of course," she said simply. She said it like you might say 'I'm going to the market; I'll be back in an hour'. "I had to. I couldn't stand it anymore. And then . . . and then I made it look like you did it. And that seemed right. That seemed like the way it should be. He loved you, after all."

Hermione didn't know what kind of fucked up sense that was supposed to make, but she really didn't care. "GUARD!" she screamed. "GUARD!"

The door opened so fast that the door slammed into the wall, bounced off, and almost hit the guard as he came rushing in.

"She killed Ron!" Hermione screamed, pointing her finger at Lavender, who rose slowly from her chair looking confused. "She admitted it! She killed him!"

The guard gave Lavender a strange look and lifted both eyebrows.

"Poor thing," Lavender said lightly. "She's lost her mind. She started getting hysterical just a few minutes ago, but really, this is too much."

The guard came forward and unlocked Hermione's chains from the ring on the table and started leading her away.

"Wait!" Hermione screamed. "Wait! Wait! No! You can't believe her! She's insane! She killed him! She admitted it! She told me! Please! You have to believe me!"

The guard took a firmer hold on her chains and pulled her out the door and down the hall toward her cell.

"Let me go! You can't do this! I didn't kill him! Lavender killed him!" Hermione was practically being drug by the chains now. "Lavender, you bitch! I'm going to tear your heart out! Just wait until I get out of here! I'll hunt you down and rip you apart you fucking tramp!"

"Get in there," the guard snarled. He shoved her into the cell without even bothering to take off the manacles.

"Wait," Hermione pleaded. "Wait, sir, please. I—you have to go get her. You have to stop her. She killed him. She told me she did, and I—"

The door slammed in her face.

She clutched her hair in her hands and gave a wordless scream of rage and frustration that echoed in the cell like a fog-horn.

Somewhere the Mother Crier answered her, but he was the only one.


	16. A Little Occlumency Now and Then

The next day when the guard brought her food—hard bread and water, no little sliver of meat this time—she told him she was ready to cooperate with the Wizengamot. She wanted to tell them where the memories were hidden.

He nodded once and left. A little over an hour later, he returned, and he had Zabini with him.

"You bastard," Hermione hissed at him.

He lifted a dark eyebrow. "Have I done something to offend you, Miss Granger?"

"I could just strangle you," she said in that same angry voice.

"For what, may I ask?" He only sounded mildly curious.

"You abandoned me here, you—"

"I did no such thing, Miss Granger."

"You did," she insisted, facing him like a duelist. This did not have quite the effect she had wanted as Zabini was easily a foot taller than her. "You lost and you just gave up. You helped get Malfoy out, that was no trouble at all, was it? But me, I—"

"I was under the impression that you wanted me to help Draco Malfoy, Miss Granger. Perhaps I was mistaken?"

"_Perhaps I was mistaken_," she muttered in a mocking impersonation, right down to the Italian accent. "No, of course you weren't _mistaken_. I'm sorry," she said.

"Apology accepted, Miss Granger."

"But you're still a bastard."

"I never denied it," he said with a grin. "Now what is this I hear about you wanting to speak to the Wizengamot?"

"I know who did it, Zabini," she said, lowering her voice and trying to keep her words from reaching the guard, who was standing by the door with a glazed look in his eyes.

"You know who did it?" Zabini asked skeptically. "Did what, Miss Granger?"

"Killed Ron, you idiot," she hissed. "Look, could we maybe talk somewh—"

"Miss Granger, do you mean to tell me that you brought me down here because you've suddenly had an epiphany?"

"Epiphany! Zabini, don't make me hit you. I'm not chained down now, and so help me, I will do it."

He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. "Alright, I'm sorry. Where would you like to talk?"

"Somewhere private," she said. "Not the visitor's room. I want to sit down."

"I'm sure our fine—er, man here can find you a chair."

"Fine, whatever," Hermione muttered. She didn't even look at the guard as he snapped the cuffs on her.

They were silent until the guard locked the chains around the iron ring, brought Hermione a chair, and left the room.

"It was Lavender Brown," Hermione told him the second she was sure the guard was gone. She had been yelling the same thing to the rooftops the day before, but they were getting rather sick of hearing it by now and had started yelling back at her to shut the hell up.

"Lavender Brown?" Zabini said.

"Yes, Lavender Brown. You remember her, she was the silly girl that always ran around with Parvati Patil."

He vaugley remembered them, though in his mind, they had both been rather vapid and silly. "Yes, alright. So how did you come to this realization?"

"Don't fucking patronize me, Zabini," Hermione snapped. "Lavender Brown came to visit me yesterday and she confessed."

"She confessed," he repeated.

"She said she did it because Ron was in love with me, and she hated the way he was always looking at me, and—hell, does it really matter why the crazy bitch did it? She did it, which means I didn't, and you can get me out of here."

"I am afraid it's not going to be as easy as that, Miss Granger," he said cautiously.

"Of course it is. She did it. She told me she did it, right here in this room."

"If Miss Brown confessed to killing Ronald Weasley as you say, that's very interesting, but it still doesn't prove anything. No one but you heard her say it. And there happen to be several witnesses, highly trained and very well respected Aurors, that discovered you alone with Mr. Weasley's body."

Hermione put her head in her hands with a little huff of frustration. "That's why I need to speak to the Wizengamot. Tell them that Lavender has the memories. She has to have them somewhere, and if they could just get them, then they would see—"

"Skimble is not going to arrest Miss Brown simply on your say-so, Miss Granger."

"Christ, Zabini, will you stop calling me that?" she demanded irritably. "It's getting on my damn nerves."

"Hermione then," he said with a faint smile. "But as I said, Skimble is not going to arrest her based on the accusations of a murderer."

"Accused murderer," she corrected.

"Accused murderer," he agreed. "But—"

"I know, all right?" she said. "I know. I just . . . I have to do something. I can't stay in here, Zabini. I can't."

"If you would allow them to use Legilimency—"

"No," she said flatly. "No."

"Why not?" he asked. "As far as I can tell, it's the only way they would be willing to believe you and arrest Miss Brown. If they heard her say it in her own voice—if they had proof that what you are saying is true—"

"I already told you, I can't do that," she said. But the urge to say yes was an agonizing weight on her chest. "I can't risk it. I've done things, Zabini, terrible things, that would have me right back in here. I have friends that I have to protect."

"Goddamn Gryffindors," he muttered.

Her lips twitched in a reluctant smile. "Yes, I know."

He rested his chin on his fisted hand thoughtfully. "You know Occlumency, don't you?"

"A little."

"How much is a little?"

"I don't know," she said. "Enough to keep someone out of my head long enough for me to kill them."

He looked a little startled by this confession.

"The war, Zabini," she reminded him. "Don't forget who you're talking to."

"No, of course not, I just—"

"Thought I was confessing to murder?" she teased. "That would be kind of stupid of me since I just accused someone else, now wouldn't it?"

"Yes—I mean . . ." He sighed. "Can you control what part of your memories that you allow—what I mean is, can you restrict the Legilimens to only those memories that you wish them to see?"

She thought about it. "I don't know," she said at last. "I've never tried to do that before."

"Do you think you could do it?"

"Maybe," she said. Now that she thought about it though, she was almost certain that she could. At least for a little while.

"Would you be willing to risk it?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I think so . . . Where are you going?"

"I'll be right back," Zabini promised as he left the room.

She stared down at the manacles around her wrists and tried to imagine them gone. Not gone for only a day while she was left alone in the dark with only the Mother Crier for company. Gone forever.

It was harder to do than she thought.


	17. A Little Legilimency Then and Now

Zabini came back after a few minutes with another guard. He was looking very pleased with himself. "I have convinced the Chief Warlock to see us later today. He was glad to hear that you have agreed to allow them to use Legilimency to 'clear this whole bloody thing up' were the exact words I believe he used."

"How much later is later?" Hermione asked.

"Now, don't get impatient, Miss—Hermione," he said. "After all, what are a few more hours?"

"They are a few more hours, Zabini, that's the fucking point."

He smiled and gestured to the guard for something. It was the canvas bag that had held the clothes and toiletries he'd brought for her the last time she went before the Wizengamot.

He held the bag out to her and she took it. She looked inside to find different clothes and robes, the comb and brush, the toothbrush and another tube of toothpaste, and more soap, shampoo, and lovely, lovely conditioner.

She looked up at Zabini with a radiant smile. "You are a beautiful, beautiful man, have I ever told you that, Zabini?" she said.

"No, I don't believe so, Hermione," he said, amused. "I do recall being likened to a prince and a god though."

"Yes, those too," she said. "So does this mean I get to take a shower?"

"I have arranged for it, yes."

"You have arranged for it," she said, laughing. "A long shower?" she pressed. "By myself? Without you banging the bloody door down?"

"I have a few more pressing matters to attend to before I accompany you to the Ministry," he said. "And Mr. . . .well, I don't really know what his name is. Anyway, he will remain outside of the shower room. I have made certain of it."

"Good," she said. She turned her attention to the guard, who was looking slightly miffed by the whole situation. She could just imagine the way Zabini had been harassing them all since she was thrown in here. It made her smile happily. "Well, then, what are you waiting for?" she asked the guard. "Unlock these damn chains."

"I will be back to get you in about an hour and a half, Miss—er, Hermione," Zabini said as the guard was leading her out of the room.

"See you later Zabini," she said as the door closed.

She took a long shower. She used all of the shampoo, the soap, conditioner, and the toothpaste. She then sat on a hard wood bench beside the door with a towel wrapped around her, gently combing the knots and tangles out of her hair until it was almost dry. By the time she put on the clothes he had brought her—black silk slacks and a sleeveless maroon blouse—and slipped into the robes, she was feeling quite a lot better, and much more optimistic. She knew that she shouldn't, that she shouldn't let herself hope that this time it would work, that she would be free, but she couldn't help herself.

When she thought she had used up as much time as she possibly could, she put the empty toiletry things back in the bag and pounded on the door to be let out.

The guard took her back to the visitor's room, locked the chains to her manacles back around the iron ring again, and left her alone. She didn't have long to wait.

When Zabini came back into the room fifteen minutes later, she was sitting in the chair with her head tilted back, humming a Christmas carol and counting the stones on the ceiling for the second time.

He stood just inside the door looking at her silently for a couple of minutes. Until Hermione finally said, "Like what you see, Zabini?" without moving her eyes from the ceiling.

"Miss Granger," he said carefully, "I am sure you are quite aware of what you look like."

Her mouth twitched. "Quite," she said. She looked at him then as he was settling into the seat across from her. "Tell me, Zabini, just what would it take to get you to relax and stop calling me 'Miss Granger' in that insufferable way?"

He gave her a heavy lidded thoughtful look that she did not misunderstand.

"Aha," she said with a grin. "Yes, I thought so. A right and proper shag might do it, huh? Well, Zabini, I will say this for you; you certainly aim high."

He smiled back at her lazily. "But not too high, is it, Miss Granger?"

She laughed. "We'll see, Zabini."

"Indeed," he murmured, then abruptly became all business once more and stood up. "Are you ready then, Miss Granger?"

"I told you to stop calling me that," she said. He just looked at her. "Fine, yes, I'm ready. Let's get on with it."

She was really not looking forward to it at all. She had never voluntarily allowed anyone to use Legilimency on her before. Never. And she considered it to be something just short of mind rape.

This feeling intensified when she was once again chained down to the chair at the center of the court room.

No private citizens had been allowed into the court this time—something she suspected Skimble had a lot to do with—so the only witnesses were the members of the Wizengamot themselves, Zabini, and the wiry little man that she assumed was the Legilimens. This helped quite a lot. The last thing she wanted at that moment was to hear Molly Weasley wailing or Ginny Weasley shouting about injustice—or justice, depending on her mood. It was going to be difficult enough keeping certain memories locked off from the probing mind fingers of the Legilimens without that distraction, thank you very much.

"I want to be absolutely clear, Miss Granger," Skimble said from his high bench, "You have agreed to allow the Wizengamot to use Legilimency on you for the purpose of finding certain memories which you claim will prove your innocence and reveal the identity of the true murderer of Mr. Ronald Weasley, is this correct?"

"Yes," she said. "But—"

"I must tell you, Miss Granger," Skimble said, straightening his spectacles, "I find this whole thing to be extremely inconvenient. Should we find nothing to support your claims, I will be _very_ annoyed."

Whether or not the Chief Warlock was annoyed with her was really not of utmost importance to her. "Sir," she said, "may I please say something?"

"If you must, Miss Granger," he said with a slight wave of his hand.

"I have some conditions—"

Zabini cleared his throat and gave her a quelling look.

She ignored him and went on. "I have some conditions that I respectfully ask you to follow before I let your Legilimens do anything."

"Miss Granger," Skimble said, but he was amused. "Miss Granger, you are hardly in any kind of position to be setting conditions."

"I am aware of that sir," she said. "But I still have to insist that your Legilimens—"

"Mr. Winterburn," Skimble said.

"That Mr. Winterburn," she amended, "Limits his search to my recent memories of no earlier than this past year."

Skimble looked at her thoughtfully. "Is there a specific reason for this, Miss Granger?"

She smiled mirthlessly. "Mr. Skimble, if there was not a reason for it, I would not have asked."

"Point taken, Miss Granger," he said. "Alright, I agree, as long as I have your word that there is nothing beyond this last year that has any relevance to this case."

"You have my word, sir," she said solemnly.

"Is that all?"

"Yes sir, that is all."

"Well then, let's get on with it, shall we?" He gestured to Winterburn and the little man drew his wand and approached her.

Hermione immediately tensed, then forced herself to relax and empty her mind of all emotion. To do this she went to that cold place inside of herself where she went when she killed, where nothing and no one mattered, where she could observe and be ruthlessly objective. It wasn't really that bad of a place to be.

When Winterburn pointed his crooked wand at her and said "_Legilimens"_ in his scratchy little voice, Hermione was waiting for him. Still, the force of the invasion was a surprise. It had been a long time since anyone had used Legilimency on her, and then it had been in battle, when both parties were under considerable stress. This was different. This almost hurt.

The court room swam in her vision, then dissolved and …

It was four days ago and she was curled up in a corner in the dark, rocking herself. The Mother Crier was screaming, '_Help me, Mother! … I love you! … I'm sorry, Mother!_' … It was two months ago and she was shuffling papers at her desk. The desk top was so covered in bits of parchment, copies of documents, and stacks of reference books that anyone else would call it disorganized. It wasn't disorganized at all. She knew exactly where everything was … It was seven months ago and she was having tea with Guenevere Bloodstone in her rose garden. Guenevere was smiling and her garnet colored hair was swept up in a French twist. One of her cats, a white one with a green eye and a blue eye was curled up in her lap. Guenevere had just proposed a joint project; a book about the properties of unicorn blood and its uses in the Dark Arts. It was sure to be brilliant and positively scandalous and … It was a year and a half ago and she was at home visiting her mother. Her father's funeral was in two days and her mother was weeping. He'd had a heart attack on his way home from work and—_No! No you don't_, Hermione thought. Winterburn had either gone back much too far by accident, or he had chosen to ignore the conditions Skimble had agreed to. She used her own limited power of Occlumency to shove the intruding mind back and block it off.

The Legilimens retreated, then pulled out completely.

Hermione gasped and shook her head. Distantly, she heard someone say something, but she couldn't understand them just yet. Then it began to make sense and she heard Skimble ask "… using Occlumency, Miss Granger?"

"He went too far back," she said, panting heavily and glaring at the little man, who just shrugged. "He—that was more than a year ago. We agreed, Skimble—"

"So we did, Miss Granger. So we did." He gave the Legilimens a stern look. "Mr. Winterburn will limit his search to only those memories within the past year that relate to this case."

"Yes sir," Winterburn said. "Sorry sir."

"Indeed. Carry on then."

Winterburn once again pointed his wand at her and said, "_Legilimens_."

It was a month ago, the day Ron was killed. She had lunch with Harry at the Leaky Caldron and he brought his eldest daughter, Lily, with him. She was a pretty little girl with Ginny's flaming red hair and freckles and Harry's grass green eyes. She was six and a half, she told Hermione proudly… It was later that day and she was in the library in London, doing research for a chapter of the book she was working on with Guenevere Bloodstone. She had read through hundreds of pages about unicorns in mythology, and the symbolism of unicorns in cultures all over the world. Her eyes were starting to hurt and she was getting another of her headaches. She decided to call it a day and … It was still later that night and she had just taken the tea kettle off of the stove, lit a fire in the hearth, and sat down with her cup and a very rare copy of _Wyked Olde Sungs_ by Richard Rookvane. The fire was crackling, and she wiggled her cold toes closer to the flames. Then suddenly the fire flared green and—nothing. There was a gaping blank space in her mind where the memory of what came next should have been and wasn't. It was like being lost. Hermione hated that feeling and distantly knew that she had screamed, but then it was gone and … Moody was just leaving, and Lavender Brown slipped by him and sat down across from her in the seat that Moody had just vacated. '_I know you didn't'_, she said again in that strange way. Not the way most people said it, but like she knew because she had a reason to know. _He was in love with you. He never said it, but I knew. I knew … It was you he wanted, not me. It was never me. It was you … I would have given anything—anything for him to look at me just once the way he looked at you … That's why I had to do it, you know? … I killed him, of course. I had to. I couldn't stand it anymore. And then . . . and then I made it look like you did it. And that seemed right. That seemed like the way it should be. He loved you, after all_—"

Hermione threw the Legilimens out of her mind with a triumphant scream, then slumped in her chair, almost unconscious. She heard the little wizard talking with the Wizengamot, but she didn't care what he was saying. She felt Zabini touch her arm and ask her if she was alright and she wished she could summon the strength to turn her hand over and clasp his, but she was so tired. Her head hurt like she'd just woken up from an all-night binge with the worst hangover in God's creation. The kind where, even though you know it's impossible for bones to actually shatter like glass, you are still convinced that your skull is going to do that very thing at any moment.

"Miss Granger?" Skimble said, and she fervently wished for her wand so that she could curse him. "Miss Granger, can you hear me?"

She groaned.

"Miss Granger, this is very important," Skimble said, raising his voice a few octaves higher, just incase she couldn't hear him.

"What?" she forced herself to say. Her voice sounded strained and parched, like she'd been eating sand. "What is it?"

"Miss Granger, the Wizengamot would like you to allow us to create a duplicate of this memory," Skimble said. "We will need it as evidence if we are going to pursue a case against Miss Lavender Brown. We would also like you to agree to testify against her, when it comes to that."

Hermione shook her head, then whimpered because, bloody hell that hurt. "What?" It was impossible. She couldn't possibly be hearing what she was hearing, they didn't just say—

"We would like your permission to make a duplicate of this memory for our—"

"I heard you," she said. She lifted her head and looked up at him, then down at her arms. They were no longer chained to the chair. The chains had fallen away and she could lift them, if she wanted. Which, of course, she couldn't. They wouldn't obey her and—

"Do you agree to allow us to—?"

She looked back at Skimble and blinked. "Yes, you can copy it if you …want. Zabini?"

"What is it, Hermione?" He knelt by her left hand and looked at her with a concerned frown.

"I think … I'm going to pass out," she said faintly. Her vision wavered, then sharpened just a little when Skimble began speaking again.

"And about your testimony, Miss Granger?" he asked. "It really would—"

"Testimony?" she said.

"They want you to testify against Lavender Brown," Zabini clarified. "They're going to arrest her."

"Arrest her," Hermion muttered. Her vision went blurry again. "Yes, I'll … testify. Silly bitch … she should have … used a memory charm … so much easier … and nothing left to … to …"

"Well then, Miss Granger," Skimble said grandly, "You are free to go. You have the Ministry's deepest apologies, and …"

But Hermione wasn't listening anymore. The blurriness started to become grey around the edges, then black, then she did exactly what she had warned Zabini she was going to do and passed out.


	18. In which Things Start to Get Kinky

Hermione woke to the smell of fresh linen and the feel of silk against her skin. She whimpered with pleasure and tried to burrow back into the dream. She didn't want it to end just yet. She didn't want to leave this dream place where there was warmth and everything was clean and there was no one screaming piteously for their mother without hope that she would ever answer.

"Miss 'Mione? Is you awake?"

She opened her eyes and looked around. She wasn't dreaming. She was laying in a huge four-poster bed with a cream linen comforter and blood red silk sheets. She peaked under the covers to see … and yes! She was naked!

"Miss 'Mione?" the little inquisitive voice came again.

Hermione put the covers down and stared at the creature. It was a house elf. She should have known. "Er—hello," she said. "This is going to sound really stupid—not to mention terribly cliché—but where am I?"

The house elf smiled and curtsied. Hermione still didn't think that this confirmed the beast as female. "You is a guest of the house of Zabini, Miss," the elf said. It was really very cute, in a pointy-nosed, bug-eyed sort of way. "Master said I was to see if you is awake."

"M—Master?" Hermione said. She was still a little groggy.

"Master Blaise, Miss." The elf gave her a strange look, as if to say 'who else?'

"Oh," she said. "Where is Master Blaise?"

The elf giggled. "You is not having to call Master Blaise 'Master', Miss 'Mione," the elf said. "Master Blaise is having tea with Mistress Lavinia in the parlor."

"Mistress Lavinia?" Hermione said.

"She is Master Blaise's mother, Miss," the elf said. It gave her another one of those looks, only this one said 'Don't you know anything?'

"Oh, I thought she was dead," Hermione said before she could think that this might not be considered very polite.

The elf clutched her fingers together in front of her mouth and stared at Hermione like she had just suggested that Mrs. Zabini was dancing naked down Main Street with a rubber chicken.

"Mistress Lavinia is not sick, Miss 'Mione," the elf said, tears brimming in her bulbous eyes.

_Oh Lord_, Hermione thought. "I didn't say that she was," she said. "I simply thought that she might have passed away from old age and—"

"Mistress Lavinia is not old, Miss 'Mione," the elf squeaked through tears that seemed to instantly double in size. "Mistress Lavinia is the most beautiful woman in the world."

"Okay," Hermione said. She wasn't about to disagree with the creature. It might decide it was necessary to prove it to her, and really, she wasn't in the mood. "I am sorry if I have insulted you or your Mistress, I just—"

"Miss 'Mione mustn't say sorry to Kinky," the elf said. "It is Kinky that must be sorry. Kinky misunderstood Miss 'Mione."

Hermione blinked at the elf. _Kinky?_ She laughed. She couldn't help it. And once she started laughing, she just couldn't seem to stop. She pressed her face into the comforter and shook with silent mirth. The whole thing seemed to hit her at once, the whole fucked up situation. She was overjoyed that she was free, but she had nowhere to go. The Ministry had taken everything, so now here she was, in some grand mansion—the Zabini mansion, no less—being harassed by a house elf named Kinky of all things, who was alternately weeping and scolding her. It was just too much, and she either had to cry herself or laugh.

Oh yes, and she was naked.

"Kinky apologizes, Miss 'Mione," Kinky said, giving her soulful puppy-dog eyes.

Hermione snorted and giggled some more, then wiped her eyes and looked at the thing. It was looking very fretful; as soon as it got away from her, it would probably go and throw itself down the stairs or iron its hands. The whole lot of them were damn silly and irrational little buggers.

"Apology accepted," she said, still grinning like a lunatic. "So, Kinky …" she hiccupped, "where are my clothes?"

"Miss 'Mione's clothes are being laundered," the elf said meekly. She was wearing a tea towel like a toga and she nervously fingered the frayed edge.

"Er—alright. Then what am I supposed to wear?"

"My suggestion would be nothing, Granger," Draco said from the doorway. "You look amazing just like that."

The elf made a little peeping sound of distress and fidgeted with the tied corner of her tea towel.

Hermione clutched the red silk sheet to her chest and glared at him. "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Nice to see you too, Granger," he said, smiling lazily and leaning one hip against the doorframe.

Hermione looked at him then. Really looked at him. He was lovely. It was a rather feminine word to use to describe a man, but it was the one that came to her mind first. He looked like an angel—the fallen kind. Ten years in prison had done little to banish his pale beauty. His hair was longer than she remembered, even though she could see that it had been recently cut, and it framed his face in uneven tendrils of platinum. Despite what prison had done to him, his face was still proud and at the same time sensual, with high cheekbones, that straight aristocratic nose that despite all of his childhood foolishness, had never been broken, and one of the prettiest mouths she had ever seen on a man.

She carefully crawled out of the bed, making sure to wrap the sheet around herself as she did. "Bring my clothes to me when they're finished then, Kinky," she said to the house elf, then dropped her eyes from Draco just long enough to give the beast a stern look. "And please do not throw yourself down the stairs or iron your hands."

"No, Miss 'Mione," said the elf obediently and scurried off. She gave Draco a wide berth as she passed, and Hermione had to wonder how many times he had kicked the thing since he'd come to stay here.

"You know, it won't do any good," he said. He was watching her with much the same look on his face as she was sure she had on hers, and he was probably thinking something similar as well.

"Why not?" she asked, moving toward him.

"She'll just bash herself with the nearest frying pan she comes across," he said with a smirk.

"So it is a female," Hermione said. She now stood before him in the open doorway with only the silk sheet to cover herself. "I wondered."

"I really don't know," he said, his grey eyes caressing her the way his hands did not yet dare to. "They all look rather androgynous to me."

She smiled and leaned in to him. "Yes, they do don't they?" she whispered against his lips.

He moved quickly, plunging his fingers into her loose tangled hair and slanting his mouth over hers. He kissed her fiercely, in a way that was almost a dare, with tongue and teeth and ten years of enforced chastity behind him. It was a kiss that pulled at things low in her body and demanded that she answer, and she did.

She dropped the sheet and it slithered to the floor between them. She then threaded her fingers through the hair at the base of his skull to pull him closer and went up on her tiptoes to deepen the kiss. He tasted like sweet brandy; dark, forbidden, and intoxicating, and she kissed him back with just as much passion as he was kissing her. When he caressed her tongue with his, she pushed back and grazed his full bottom lip with her teeth. When he nipped her lip with his teeth to get her to open wider, she did, and her fingers tightened in his hair. His arms came around her waist and pulled her tight against him and she heard someone moan. She thought it might have been her.

He broke the kiss just as she was beginning to think that she would have to do it herself or forego breathing. He trailed his mouth down her throat, pausing to nibble each point of her collarbone and flick his tongue into the hollow against her rapid pulse.

"What …did you do … to your hair?" she asked him as he was kissing his way down one breast. "It looks like you … hacked it off …with a dull butcher knife."

He chuckled against her breast, and the sound vibrated over her skin, making her tingle. "Granger, do you ever shut up?"

"Sorry, it's just I—"

Someone cleared her throat behind Hermione and they both went very still. "I'm so sorry to interrupt," a woman's accented voice said behind her. "But, Miss Granger, my son would like a word with you in the parlor, when you're not …too busy."

_Son? Oh, Christ, Mrs. Zabini! Zabini's mother!_

"Don't you dare laugh," she warned Draco as she knelt at his feet to gather the sheet around herself again before she faced the woman. "Don't you dare."

He sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and bit down on it, but he did not laugh. Not yet.

Reluctantly, Hermione turned, expecting to find some prim little old blue-haired Italian woman looking at her like she was the Whore of Babylon.

Mrs. Zabini didn't look a day over thirty, if that. She was tall and slim with hair as dark as midnight that fell to her waist in waves, and eyes as deep and black as Zabini's and just as intelligent. She looked like a dancer, was the first thing that Hermione thought. Like an Arabian belly-dancer. It was easy to see how she could have attracted eleven different husbands, most of whom were completely aware of her black-widow reputation, and lured them all to their deaths. Some of them likely would have slit their own wrists or cheerfully drank poison merely because she expressed a wish for them to do so.

And this beautiful creature was looking her over like she was a prize race-horse, or a choice cut of beef. "I can see why they like you," Lavinia Zabini said.

"They?" Hermione said. She jumped when Draco moved up behind her and pressed his mouth into the smooth bare curve of her shoulder.

Lavinia Zabini smiled, amused. "Yes. My son and, now it seems, Mr. Malfoy, have become quite fond of you. If this were not so, I can assure you, you would not be here."

What was she supposed to say to that? she wondered. "Mmm … Malfoy, do you mind?" she snapped. "That's distracting."

"Yes," Lavinia Zabini said. "Well, should I tell my son you will be along shortly? Or should I tell him that you would like him to wait …a few minutes."

"No," Hermione said, stepping away from Draco so he would stop doing that thing with her shoulder that was making all the blood in her head drain straight to her loins. "No—I'll hurry, I just—I need my clothes. The house-elf said—"

"I will send Kinky to your rooms with something of mine for the time being," she said. "I am afraid we will have to arrange for something later. You only have the two sets of clothes and robes that your Mr. Harry Potter had my son get for your hearings, and that just won't do, will it, my dear?"

"Er—no, of course not," Hermione said.

Lavinia Zabini nodded once, then turned gracefully on her heal and started to walk away.

"Mrs. Zabini—"

She paused and turned back. "Something else?"

"Thank you."

She smiled and it was beautiful. It was like being smiled upon by a goddess. "You are quite welcome, my dear," she said, and walked away.

"Wow," Hermione said when she was gone. "So that's Zabini's famous mother?"

"Mmm hmm," Draco said as he slid his hands up the curve of her bare back and made her tremble.

"Stop that," Hermione said. She started to walk back into her rooms and slam the door in his face, but he was standing on the sheet and she almost lost it again. "Give me that. I have to go get dressed—And my hair. It must look awful._ I_ must look awful. I've been in prison for over a month. I probably look like a hundred different kinds of ragged. And will you _please stop doing that_?"

With a laugh, he dropped one last lingering kiss on the back of her neck between her shoulders and walked off.

"Smug bastard," she muttered as she went back in her rooms and close the door, but she was grinning as she said it.


	19. In which there is a Problem

"We have a problem," Zabini said the moment she entered the parlor.

She paused in the doorway and gave him a level glare. "_We_ have a problem, Zabini?" she said, raising one eyebrow. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean? And before you answer, let me tell you 'we have a problem' is not something I want to be hearing right now because it can mean so many things, most of which I do not want to think about at this moment."

He folded his arms over his chest and looked down at her. She hated that. It always made her feel small and fragile. Yes, maybe she was small and fragile, but she did not like having it shoved in her face.

"Do you have something more important to be thinking about, Miss Granger?"

She tilted her head back and somehow managed to look down her nose at him. "It may not be more important, but it's a damn sight more pleasurable. And stop calling me that."

"I spoke to Harry Potter while you were sleeping, Miss Granger," he said as though she had not spoke. "I thought perhaps the Potters might have a place for you to stay until the Ministry can return your property to you."

"Yeah," she said. "I'll bet Ginny Potter had a thing or three to say about that."

He smiled. "Indeed she did. Would you like me to tell you what she said?"

He was teasing her, but he was also serious. "I've known Ginny a while, Zabini," she said, "and anything she said, she probably learned it from me, so I'll just use my imagination if it's all the same to you."

"Neadless to say, you were not extended an invitation," he said.

"Neadless to say," she repeated wryly.

"Miss Granger," he said patiently, then paused. "Will you come in out of the doorway, please?"

She looked around at the entryway and grinned. "I've developed rather a fondness for doorways all of a sudden, Zabini," she said. "Why don't you just tell me what the problem is?"

He swiped a hand through his curly black hair and grumbled something under his breath that sounded like, "…if I'd known …never would have taken the bloody job."

"Bet you wish I was back in prison right about now, don't you Zabini?" she asked him.

He shot her an irritated look. "No, Miss Granger—"

"Stop calling me that," she snapped, losing her patience. "If it bothers you so much to be entirely informal with me, then call me Granger, like Malfoy does, but for Christ's sake, stop with the 'Miss'."

"Hermione then," he said. "No, I do not wish you back in prison. Believe it or not, I quite enjoy your company. I find you … amusing."

"I amuse you?" she said. "Wow, Zabini, you sure know how to flatter a girl, don't you?"

He made a frustrated growling noise in the back of his throat. "We are getting off of the subject, here, Hermione," he said. He saw her unwavering and defiant glare and said, "If you want to argue with me, then by all means, I will accommodate you. But not now. Now we have a problem."

"Yes, you've said that already," she said. "Are you ever going to tell me what kind of problem it is? 'We have a problem' is a bit vague, you know. It could mean 'the world is going to explode', or it could mean 'we're out of sugar'. You have to be more specific."

He smiled faintly. "It is somewhat between the two," he said.

The way he said it got her attention and she finally came into the room and sat down on one of Lavinia Zabini's pretty little divans. "Tell me," she said flatly.

"The Ministry sent six Aurors to Miss Lavender Brown's house this morning—"

"Morning?" Hermione looked around at the light coming through the giant picture windows. "I slept through yesterday and all night?"

"Well, yes. Though it was almost dark when we left the Ministry," he said.

"Oh," she said. She waved her hand and said, "Anyway, what were you saying?"

"The Ministry sent six Aurors to Miss Lavender Brown's home. When they got there, the house was empty. Completely empty. Right down to the floors and the bare walls." He pinched the bridge of his nose like he was developing a headache. "Tobias Skimble was very upset by the whole thing, let me assure you. He has promised that his best Aurors are hunting for her everywhere. They will catch her, Miss—er, Hermione."

Hermione sat there for a while waiting to feel whatever it was Zabini apparently thought she should be feeling. There was nothing. No fear, no anger, not even indignation. Nothing. Well …not nothing. There was that cold objective part of her whispering softly in her ear. And the thing about that voice was; she always listened to it. That voice had saved her life more than once.

She stood up abruptly. "Zabini, can I borrow some money?" she asked.

He looked a little surprised, but he said, "Yes, of course. How much do you need?"

"Enough to buy a wand."

Draco walked in just in time to hear that and lifted both pale eyebrows at Zabini. "Are we going shopping?"

Zabini shrugged. "So it would seem."

"This should be interesting."

Hermione didn't know why he was so amused until they entered Olivanders wand shop and a wizard and witch with their little boy took one look at her, and then Draco standing behind her, and decided they would shop somewhere else.

"What was that about?" She muttered to Zabini when they were gone.

"You haven't seen the Prophet recently," he said calmly. "You've been all over it for a month, and now that Draco's out, well …"

She glanced at Draco, who was peeking into a wand box on one of the middle shelves. He saw her looking and dropped her a cheeky wink. He didn't look that bothered by the negative attention, so she decided that she would not be either.

"Good afternoon," said a soft voice.

Hermione looked around to see Olivander staring at her with his odd silver eyes. "Hermione Granger," he said. "We meet again. I read about you in the Prophet. Unfortunate business. Very unfortunate."

"Hello Mr. Olivander," Hermione said, smiling at him. "I … well, I need a wand."

"Yes, you would, wouldn't you?" he said. "They broke your other one, yes?"

"Er—yes, they did."

"Terrible," he muttered, moving down one of the isles of wands. "Just terrible. Fine piece of work, that wand. Seven and three-quarters inches. Vine wood and dragon heart-string. Very powerful. Shame." He didn't even glance at Draco, who was rummaging around in the same isle. He snatched the box he was in the process of opening out of his hand, blew the dust off of it, making Draco hack and sputter, and passed the wand inside it to her. "Try this one. Oak and phoenix feather. Eleven inches. Very flexible."

Hermione took the wand, but it was snatched out of her hand almost immediately.

"No, no," he grumbled and moved past Draco down the isle. "Here, try this. Holly and dragon-heartstring. Six and a half inches. Rather whippy."

Another wand was thrust into her hand, but she had hardly even lifted it when it was taken away again.

"Try this," Olivander said, thrusting yet another wand into her hand.

She must have tried a hundred wands, but every one was snatched from her fingers to be replaced by yet another. Olivander seemed to become more and more exited with every wand that did not suit. Finally, he put a long black wand into her hand. "Ebony and unicorn hair. Twelve and a quarter inches. Quite springy. Go on, go on, try it."

She took it and felt the instant warmth that she remembered when she bought her first wand here at the age of eleven. She waved it once and little silver and green sparks shot out of it and danced around in the air for a moment before they faded.

"Yes, yes, yes," Olivander said eagerly, climbing down from the movable steps he'd been hanging off of. "Very nice, very nice. Odd though. Very odd."

She smiled at him. Olivander was a bit eccentric and he had a taste for the dramatic. "What is odd Mr. Olivander?"

"Well, aren't you a Gryffindor, Miss Granger?" he asked.

"I was," she said. "In school."

"Yes, well, then it is very odd that when you waved that wand, it emitted green sparks instead of red ones," he said. "But the wand knows far better than I what is in the heart of a witch."

"Right," she said. She didn't want to be rude to the old man, but she thought he was probably reading a lot more into it than there really was. "Well, er—do Malfoy next."

Draco jumped and turned around with an open wand box in his hands.

Olivander snatched it away from him and shoved it back on the shelf. "No, no, not that one," he said. "Follow me."

Half an hour later she and Draco both had wands—his was fourteen inches, willow and dragon-heartstring, very swishy—and they all left the wand shop.

"Well, if that is all," Zabini said, "we should probably be going back. My mother will be harassing the elves right now. Threatening their lives if they don't have supper ready by seven."

Hermione looked around. "But it's not even three o'clock yet."

He smiled enigmatically. "Was there somewhere else you wanted to go, Hermione?"

"No," she said automatically, then, "Wait, could we maybe …?"

He lifted a brow. "Yes?"

She glanced at Draco, who didn't appear to be even paying attention, then said in a subdued voice, "I wanted to visit Ron."

"His grave you mean?"

"Of course his grave, Zabini," she said. "Did you think I wanted to hold a séance and have a conversation?"

He smiled. "No, of course not. Let's go visit Mr. Weasley then, shall we?"


	20. In which there is a Graveside Row

Hermione knelt beside Ron's grave and laid a bouquet of daisies, which she had conjured with her wand, at the base of the headstone. The headstone was simple alabaster with a picture of Ron smiling and waving set into it. Beneath the picture there were words engraved in the stone:

**RONALD WEASLEY**

**BELOVED SON, BROTHER, AND FRIEND**

**1980—2008**

She let her fingers lightly trace the words and felt a tear slide down her cheek. Whatever else they had been to each other, and not been to each other, they had always been friends. They had once been more than that, and he had not been able to let that go and move on, and this made her sad. They could have shared so many more good times together if he had only been able to let her go.

"I did love you once," she murmured. "I'm so sorry Ron. So very sorry."

"You should be," Ginny said, striding up behind the headstone and glaring down at her. "You've got a lot of nerve coming here, Hermione. And bringing _him_ with you."

Hermione looked up at her and saw that she was pointing a finger angrily at Draco, who just smirked. Hermione slowly got to her feet. Behind Ginny, Harry was hurrying after her, herding their four little children along with him.

"Why the devil did you run off like that?" he asked his wife. Then he saw Hermione and the two men standing behind her and said, "Oh. Hello Hermione."

She smiled. "Hello Harry. I've missed you."

"Er—yeah. I've missed you too," he said, ignoring the annoyed look his wife sent him. "James, stop that," he scolded his six-year-old son, who was tugging on his twin sister's braid. "You're hurting Lily. That's not nice."

"Got your hands full, eh Potter?" Draco said, eyeing the youngest of the red-headed children, Margaret, who was yanking on the hem of his robe and gesturing for him to pick her up.

Ginny swooped in and lifted the child into her arms and away from him. Hermione couldn't help but grin at how relieved he looked by this.

Harry glared at Draco and picked up his youngest son, Arthur, and held him on his hip. "What are you doing out Malfoy? I didn't think they let Death Eaters out of prison."

"I actually have you to thank for that, Potter," Draco said.

"How's that, Malfoy?"

"See, it was Zabini here who got me out," Draco said. "If you hadn't paid him to defend Granger, I'd probably still be rotting in Azkaban."

Hermione didn't miss the shocked, angry look that Ginny gave her husband, and neither did he, though he chose to ignore it. "I was under the impression that I hired you to help Hermione, Mr. Zabini," he said.

Zabini smiled and glanced at Hermione before he said, "I did Mr. Malfoy's case pro bono."

Hermione lifted a brow at that. Clearly, Zabini had been reading up on his muggle terms.

"You see, I discovered a gross miscarriage of justice in his case," Zabini said. "It was enough to have the whole case dismissed and Mr. Malfoy immediately freed."

Harry's eyes narrowed. "What kind of 'miscarriage of justice'?"

"It's called false imprisonment, Mr. Potter," he said, obviously enjoying himself. "This comes about, as you may know, when one is arrested and imprisoned without sufficient evidence and are never tried for their crimes. In Mr. Malfoy's case, he was put in Azkaban and conveniently forgotten. He was arrested strictly on the basis that he was branded with the Dark Mark. I believe Mr. Moody 'caught him' when he and several others raided Malfoy Manor, and he did not put up a fight, but asked for their help. This would suggest that he was not, in fact, working with the Death Eaters, but their captive. Mr. Malfoy tells me that his father was trying to convince him to join with Lord Voldemort, but that he had refused."

"Of course he would tell you that," Harry said, eyeing Draco with profound dislike.

Ginny drew closer to Harry's side. "What are you doing here? You don't belong here." She looked directly at Hermione and added, "None of you."

"I'm innocent, Ginny. Didn't you hear," Hermione said softly.

She glared. "I did hear, and it's a load of rubbish in my opinion. Just some clever little trick of yours to avoid paying for what you did to my brother."

Hermione nodded silently and turned away from them. "Goodbye Harry. Thank you."

But Ginny wasn't finished. She grabbed Hermione's arm and made her stay. "You killed him, Hermione. I know you did. I don't know how you convinced the Wizengamot that you didn't, but I know you did it. I know it."

Hermione looked down at her hand, but she didn't remove it. Ginny tightened her grip just a little, trying to hurt her.

Hermione looked down at the twins, Lilly and James, named after Harry's parents. They were so sweet, with huge green eyes and freckles along the bridge of their little button noses. They smiled up at her.

"Ginny," she said softly, fingering her new wand in a fold of her robe. "Ginny, don't make me hurt you. Not in front of your kids. Please let go."

"You wouldn't dare," Ginny said in an angry hiss.

"I don't think you want to wager on just exactly how much I'll dare," Hermione said, meeting her eyes steadily. She was in that cold place again. "I think you know me better than that."

"Don't do this, you two, please," Harry said. "You're friends. You don't want to hurt each other. Especially not here, over Ron's grave."

Ginny suddenly let her go, though Hermione didn't think Harry's peaceful words had much to do with it. "I'm sorry," she said, though she didn't look sorry. She looked mad as hell. "Harry, let's go home, please."

"No need," Hermione said. "We're leaving."

She met Harry's eyes over Ginny's shoulder and he gave her a single curt nod. It said as plainly as any words 'we're done now, you and I', and she felt like crying all over again.

"Goodbye Hermione," he said.

She couldn't speak, she couldn't bear to say it, to close that door forever. She just nodded her head and walked away.

Draco walked beside her, though he didn't touch her or say anything for a while. Zabini followed calmly behind them, for all the world as if he were just having a leisurely stroll through the park.

"Why the hell won't she believe that you're innocent?" Draco finally asked. "You proved it, didn't you? I thought you were friends. Shouldn't she forgive you, or apologize, or something?"

She sighed. "Ginny's testimony was one of the deciding factors in my case. She was a character witness. She described my relationship with Ron as controlling. She said I was too demanding, that I made Ron's life miserable, and that he left me because I changed. Because the war changed me. All of which is perfectly true, and when taken out of context, was pretty damning."

"You made Weasley's life miserable?" Draco said doubtfully.

"We made each other's lives miserable," she said. "We were not compatible really, but he refused to admit it, and because it mattered more to him than it did to me, I let him go on pretending that it was working. That we were in love."

"That still doesn't explain why she won't believe you and apologize," he said.

"Doesn't it?" she asked. "Sometimes it's easier to forgive someone else for being wrong than to forgive yourself. I think maybe Ginny does believe me. She just can't bring herself to say it yet."


End file.
